I can’t believe I waited until my junior year to attend my first weekender! The weekender is traditionally USC’s away game against either UC Berkeley or Stanford, when everyone drives up for the weekend to watch our football team win. This year we beat Stanford, and it was one of my favorite memories so far at USC!
Me and four of my friends decided to make the 6 hour drive up to Palo Alto in my friend’s Prius. So on Friday morning, we packed in and headed north. I somehow claimed the front seat over my friend Wes, one of the Viterbi Freshman Academy coaches, who is well over six feet tall. After about 3 hours of driving, we stopped at an In n’ Out in the middle of nowhere, and managed to run into many of our USC friends there. After 3 more hours, we finally arrived, ready to take on the city.
As USC students, our first adventure in the city was obviously more food, so we walked around downtown Palo Alto until we found a taco place with a relatively short wait. We made friends with some local Stanford fans during dinner, making sure to let them know they had no chance of winning. We planned on heading to Stanford around 9 AM, so after walking around downtown a little more, we headed home to rest up for game day.
Dinner with my friends (minus Wes, who took the photo)
We woke up at 8 to get ready to walk over to Stanford’s campus, since the game was at 12:30 PM. The area around the stadium is a huge sprawling space, so people had set up tents and RVs all around for a mile or so in each direction. My friends and I wandered through, constantly running into our friends and other USC fans who would yell “Fight On!” as we walked by. The excitement in the air was an awesome feeling, I loved being a part of it!
Ran into my friends and their RV!
A big group of USC students who weren’t able to buy tickets found each other and walked to downtown to watch the game. Everyone was fixated on the TV and reacting to the game. When we scored, everyone was jumping and yelling, and you could hear the roar of the stadium as fans cheered along! Watching our football team beat Stanford 13-10 on their own field was a feeling I’ll never forget.
I had an amazing time, and the 6 hour drive was definitely worth it. I would recommend going all 4 years if you have the chance. I know I’ll be back next year, so hopefully I see you all there!
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