2009 09 03 Prairie State Rivalry – WIN #1 and COUNTING!!

I’ll cut to what’s important. EIU beat Illinois State convincingly 31-6. As I mentioned in the prior post, this was a particularly important win to Trev since Illinois State had courted him when he was deciding to come back to Illinois from Bowling Green and, of course, made it sound like he’d made a big mistake to choose Eastern instead of them….made this victory all the sweeter. Our guys on defense did a great job keeping ISU to only 20 yards rushing for the entire game. Trev felt really good after the win, thank goodness, with no more than the expected aches and pains after such a game.

Kyle worked Thursday morning but then drove over from Carlinville to joined us in Charleston for the game.

Since it was a night game Ken preferred not to drive in the motorhome, so we did our tailgating out of the back of the jeep. Ken really liked this for a break since he was able to actually kick back and enjoy tailgating instead of spending all his time setting up, hosting and tearing down. Gordy Kickels' (who had a really great game!) family have a grill like ours and besides offering us some really great mushrooms off the grill let us borrow a portion to get in a few brats before the game. By the way, just a reminder to any of you coming to the daytime home games…we always have our grill going the whole time and your welcome to make use of it rather than have to bring your own set up.

Since we weren’t tethered to our motorhome before this game we did a lot more walking around in the tailgate area, taking in all the spectacles we often missed in the past. The have a free food and beer tent for the 21-and-over students, and activities such as a mechanical bull contest going on. There’s also lots of fun activities for the little people as well such as lots of blow-up attractions to jump around on and in, face painting and cartoon friends dropping by to say hello.

Elmo wanted to trade me a hug for what was in the glass.

The new jumbotron was in place so we got to see Trev’s picture and name in lights as they announced the starting line up.

All NCAA Division I teams nationally participated in a special pre-game full team handshake to show their commitment to sportsmanship on this the open day of the college season. Always a good idea to shake hands before you go back out and start beating the snot out of one another.

Ken really struggles with getting action shots at night games because of the lighting so this is about the best he got of Trev, breaking tackles to head for the quarterback.
The EIU staff photographer Sandy King does a really great job on the field and off and so I invite you to take a look at her game photo gallery by clicking here. I particularly like photo 3 where Trev is standing by the coaches in the ‘mist’ waiting to run out of the huddle and phote 40 where Trev and Andre are coming in on either side of a Redbird ball carrier. She has an album of both tailgating and game photos on http://www.eiupanthers.com/ after every game.

Kyle stayed at Trev’s house Thursday evening and celebrated the victory with the guys. They called us about 10am Friday morning so we went in and took Kyle, Trev, Kevin and Chris out for a victory breakfast at Lincoln Garden. The waitress ask if they were brothers….geez…I’d love to claim them all but could you imagine the food bill having to bring up that crew!!

Kyle needed to get back to Carlinville so he, Jenni and Staley could turn around and drive to Quincy for the weekend since Staley had an appointment for her next set of puppy vaccinations. Ken and I are glad that we seem to have pretty constant activity at our house even when we are on these extended trips. Jenni was disappointed though that Ken wouldn’t be around to do his usual great job of cooking!

We’ll update you in the next few days on are quiet time between games here in Eastern Illinois.

Hugs, C