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  1. #1

    My son’s first Duke game

    Hi. My son is 4.5 years old and I wanted to share our experience today at his first Duke game. I’m copying this from a Facebook post, I hope that’s okay!

    Be the dad you wish you had!

    Growing up I didn’t have much of a relationship with my dad. I was always jealous of those whose dad played sports with them, watched sports with them, took them to sporting events etc.

    Ever since Sawyer was born I vowed to do better and reverse the cycle. Today one of my dreams came true as I was able to take Sawyer to his first Duke game. It wasn’t perfect, in fact far from it.

    The day started with tears about itchy pants and the wrong pair of socks. We had to battle ice and snow on the road. And we had to make a pit stop for him to pee because he was about to pee in his pants. We stopped at a gas station and the bathroom was “out of order.” We spent some time (too long) talking about how he could pre outside at the gas station. We put on his “itchy pants” and the wrong socks and I finally convinced him to pee in the snow. He finally agreed and tried but nothing came out making this a useless stop.

    About ten minutes before we arrived at Duke, Sawyer decided that he wanted to go home. He had left a toy home and he was missing mommy. We finally got to the parking and walked about a mile (which is not a small feat for a four year old) to get toCameron Indoor Stadiumm. Sawyer enjoyed the music, the students dancing, etc. About halfway through the first half he was trying to get me to take him downstairs to walk around but somehow I talked him into waiting for the first half to be over.

    An incredible gymnastics display during halftime then we walked around downstairs a little bit. About five minutes into the second half Sawyer said he wanted to go home. I held him off for a few minutes and he fell asleep in his chair against my shoulder while holding my hand. A few minutes later he crawled up on my lap and went to sleep in my arms. I didn’t want to wake him so we stayed that way until about 20 mins after the game ended. We ended the day with a stuffed Duke teddy bear from the Duke team store and a nice walk back to the car in which he did better!

    Did he have a good time? I think so, but I KNOW this dad did. Will he remember? Probably not, but I will!!!

    I’m incredibly humbled by the blessing to be his father and thankful to take as many opportunities I can to be the dad that I wish I had!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Richmond, VA
    I hope this will be the first of many Duke games you share with your son.

  3. #3
    Congrats to you! What a wonderful day, and one that I’m sure your son will remember fondly in coming years.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, DC area
    Keep watching games on tv with him and reinforce the experience!

    -jk

  5. #5
    Glad you had fun. I used to call them the most expensive naps ever! But they are sweet memories now.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by kshepinthehouse View Post
    Hi. My son is 4.5 years old and I wanted to share our experience today at his first Duke game. I’m copying this from a Facebook post, I hope that’s okay!

    Be the dad you wish you had!

    Growing up I didn’t have much of a relationship with my dad. I was always jealous of those whose dad played sports with them, watched sports with them, took them to sporting events etc.

    Ever since Sawyer was born I vowed to do better and reverse the cycle. Today one of my dreams came true as I was able to take Sawyer to his first Duke game. It wasn’t perfect, in fact far from it.

    The day started with tears about itchy pants and the wrong pair of socks. We had to battle ice and snow on the road. And we had to make a pit stop for him to pee because he was about to pee in his pants. We stopped at a gas station and the bathroom was “out of order.” We spent some time (too long) talking about how he could pre outside at the gas station. We put on his “itchy pants” and the wrong socks and I finally convinced him to pee in the snow. He finally agreed and tried but nothing came out making this a useless stop.

    About ten minutes before we arrived at Duke, Sawyer decided that he wanted to go home. He had left a toy home and he was missing mommy. We finally got to the parking and walked about a mile (which is not a small feat for a four year old) to get toCameron Indoor Stadiumm. Sawyer enjoyed the music, the students dancing, etc. About halfway through the first half he was trying to get me to take him downstairs to walk around but somehow I talked him into waiting for the first half to be over.

    An incredible gymnastics display during halftime then we walked around downstairs a little bit. About five minutes into the second half Sawyer said he wanted to go home. I held him off for a few minutes and he fell asleep in his chair against my shoulder while holding my hand. A few minutes later he crawled up on my lap and went to sleep in my arms. I didn’t want to wake him so we stayed that way until about 20 mins after the game ended. We ended the day with a stuffed Duke teddy bear from the Duke team store and a nice walk back to the car in which he did better!

    Did he have a good time? I think so, but I KNOW this dad did. Will he remember? Probably not, but I will!!!

    I’m incredibly humbled by the blessing to be his father and thankful to take as many opportunities I can to be the dad that I wish I had!
    Doesn't get any better than that...

  7. #7
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Durham, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by kshepinthehouse View Post
    Hi. My son is 4.5 years old and I wanted to share our experience today at his first Duke game. I’m copying this from a Facebook post, I hope that’s okay!

    Be the dad you wish you had!

    Growing up I didn’t have much of a relationship with my dad. I was always jealous of those whose dad played sports with them, watched sports with them, took them to sporting events etc.

    Ever since Sawyer was born I vowed to do better and reverse the cycle. Today one of my dreams came true as I was able to take Sawyer to his first Duke game. It wasn’t perfect, in fact far from it.

    The day started with tears about itchy pants and the wrong pair of socks. We had to battle ice and snow on the road. And we had to make a pit stop for him to pee because he was about to pee in his pants. We stopped at a gas station and the bathroom was “out of order.” We spent some time (too long) talking about how he could pre outside at the gas station. We put on his “itchy pants” and the wrong socks and I finally convinced him to pee in the snow. He finally agreed and tried but nothing came out making this a useless stop.

    About ten minutes before we arrived at Duke, Sawyer decided that he wanted to go home. He had left a toy home and he was missing mommy. We finally got to the parking and walked about a mile (which is not a small feat for a four year old) to get toCameron Indoor Stadiumm. Sawyer enjoyed the music, the students dancing, etc. About halfway through the first half he was trying to get me to take him downstairs to walk around but somehow I talked him into waiting for the first half to be over.

    An incredible gymnastics display during halftime then we walked around downstairs a little bit. About five minutes into the second half Sawyer said he wanted to go home. I held him off for a few minutes and he fell asleep in his chair against my shoulder while holding my hand. A few minutes later he crawled up on my lap and went to sleep in my arms. I didn’t want to wake him so we stayed that way until about 20 mins after the game ended. We ended the day with a stuffed Duke teddy bear from the Duke team store and a nice walk back to the car in which he did better!

    Did he have a good time? I think so, but I KNOW this dad did. Will he remember? Probably not, but I will!!!

    I’m incredibly humbled by the blessing to be his father and thankful to take as many opportunities I can to be the dad that I wish I had!
    Kind of reminds me of taking my daughter to DPAC. She slept through Ringo Starr, Paul Simon and Harry Connick among others. I asked her about it once. She said DPAC has the most comfortable seats.

  8. #8
    Well done, Sir! I took my 4.5 year old to his first Duke football game this fall and it was variations on the same theme.

    I was lucky to have one of those fathers who took his son to sporting events and your intuition is correct. It is a great way for fathers and sons to bond and have fun together. My father had season tickets for the Baltimore Colts and, from a very young age, perhaps as early as 5, I started going with him. I have a season ticket to Duke football and when my son came along, I looked forward to taking him with me. That became especially true after I lost my dad a couple of years ago.

    When he was two and started noticing me going away for weekends to go to games, he started asking, “I get in Daddy’s car and go to football games?” He was too young then and last year was not possible, but this, this year, we thought he was ready. I got an extra ticket for the Pitt game.

    My guy is a good traveler. The car ride from Maryland was fine. I brought some of his toys and he occupied himself in the hotel room. I found a park nearby and took him there for a while. Still, I knew the game itself would present challenges.

    He enjoys climbing into my lap and watching football and basketball games on television in short stretches, but three and a half hours is another thing entirely. Sure enough, he quickly lost interest in the game itself and became fidgety. I brought his iPad and he spent most of the game quietly watching YouTube Kids with barely a glance at the field.

    Another challenge is that he has an implacable hatred of marching bands. He was with my wife at a parade and loved the fire trucks and the floats, but then a marching band came along and made too much noise and made a spectacle of themselves and ruined a perfectly good parade. Halftime, might have been dicey, but fortunately he took it all in relative good humor, merely pointing out that marching bands are bad and otherwise silently glaring and seething. I thought DUMB put on a great show, but what do I know.

    All gameday, I had been promising him that the Black Knights parachute team would jump out of an airplane and land in the stadium. It was rather windy that day and, right before halftime, their plane flew over and released some sandbags with chutes to test the wind. They basically went sideways and out of sight quickly. Moments later, it was announced that the show was cancelled. I had to spend several minutes walking back my hype about the parachutes.

    My son did not like any of the food options at the stadium. I am in the Tower so we have super swank stadium food with lots of options. He picked at some potatoes au gratin and a corn muffin. The situation was rescued in the second half when I got him hot chocolate. That was the highlight of the game. When my wife asked him how he liked the game, he said, “They had hot chocolate!”

    I was crazy busy when the thread about dining options in Durham was active and I never had a chance to offer my observations so I will do it here with a slant toward dining with 4.5 year olds. Bullock’s was a great option. They have a children’s menu with all the usual suspects. Dad could get barbecue while he had a grilled cheese sandwich. For some inexplicable reason, they were out of ice cream though. For what it is worth I am in the camp that Bullock’s is as good as it always was and compares favorably with any barbecue I have had in North Carolina, and I have had a lot. The culinary highlight of the trip, however, was Waffle House. My boy discovered chocolate chip waffles. The manager showed the line cook how to make his with ears so that it looked like Mickey Mouse. That was another thing he raved about afterwards.

    Despite it all, as he gets older, I am confident that my son and I have fun future of going to games together and I am sure you and your son do too. As for now, a few weeks after the game, he told me, “I thought I liked football, but I was crazy.” Nevertheless, he keeps asking, “When can we go back to North Carolina?”

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chesapeake, VA.
    Great story, very sweet. Brings back some memories for me. Thanks, and keep up the good work of being the Dad you wanted to have.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by kshepinthehouse View Post
    ...The day started with tears about itchy pants and the wrong pair of socks...
    Whatever race, creed, sex, sexual orientation, political preference, left or right handedness, tall, short, fat or skinny, old or young, itchy pants and the wrong socks slice across the divides between us.

    Nobody Likes Itchy Pants.

    Except the holes down the road. They love itchy pants.
    Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Manhattan
    Quote Originally Posted by kshepinthehouse View Post
    I held him off for a few minutes and he fell asleep in his chair against my shoulder while holding my hand. A few minutes later he crawled up on my lap and went to sleep in my arms. I didn’t want to wake him so we stayed that way until about 20 mins after the game ended.
    I was too young to remember this for certain, but I’m fairly sure that my earliest memory in Cameron is falling asleep against the golden rail in the first row of the upstairs section. I hope your son looks back on his first game as fondly as I do one day!

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Awesome. Can't wait to bring my son to one. Gonna be after COVID cools down a bit more though...

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    NC
    Very cool moment, I'm glad you got to enjoy it. My son (now 7, was 4 at the time) was not so interested in his first game sadly. Gonna probably be a while before he goes to another - he doesn't seem to have picked up his dad's affinity for sports (yet).

  14. #14
    I love these stories. Thanks for sharing!

  15. #15
    Living the dream

  16. #16
    There's a quote by Bobby Robson about English soccer, but it very much applies here:

    “What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”

  17. #17
    I've brought my son to enough games that now the formerly little tyke can drive his mother home from the post game celebration. And he can box out if anybody gets in my way at the bar. He's a cutie pie, he is.
    Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Cary, NC
    My oldest (who is now a junior at ECU) has been to a few and gets into the games (even though he thinks it's cool to be diffident)

    IMG_1370.jpg

    This is my youngest at his first Duke game.*

    IMG_3404.jpg

    The two of them at their most recent one (Cleveland State/Loyola, Md/Elon)

    IMG_8204.jpg

    *I can't figure out how to get the picture rotated correctly
    Duke '96
    Cary, NC

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chapel Hill
    Quote Originally Posted by Native View Post
    I was too young to remember this for certain, but I’m fairly sure that my earliest memory in Cameron is falling asleep against the golden rail in the first row of the upstairs section. I hope your son looks back on his first game as fondly as I do one day!

    Native (back in the day)
    C028CB66-665F-44E6-B79F-A72089D97659.jpg

    Love, Ima

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