Students celebrate snow in pre-Bowl brawl

Hundreds of people gathered on the Cathedral lawn yesterday, Super Bowl Sunday. There was… Hundreds of people gathered on the Cathedral lawn yesterday, Super Bowl Sunday. There was chaos, chanting and merriment, even as gatherers dodged projectiles.

No, this was not a riot — it took place before the Super Bowl. The projectiles were snowballs.

After a historic snowfall hammered the city this weekend, Pitt student Andrew Max created a Facebook event called, “Pre superbowl Pitt SNOWBALL FIGHT!” at 5 a.m. Saturday and invited 200 people.

“When I went to bed, four people were confirmed,” Max said. “When I woke up, there were 500 people.”

About 200 people attended the event, but about 50 of those attendees watched from a safe distance.

At 2:30 p.m. Alan Haman made his way to the Cathedral lawn. He was the first one to arrive, but there were already two forts made, one along the sidewalk in the center of the lawn between the Cathedral and Heinz Chapel, and another in front of Heinz Chapel.

Haman arrived early to make snowballs, but the snow was dry and packing it was difficult.

“I haven’t made any good ones yet,” he said.

The fort by Heinz Chapel was furnished with a small beige chair. The underclassmen team gathered around the chair, and the upperclassmen took the other fort.

Shortly before 3 p.m. someone launched a small snowball from the underclassmen side. It hit an upperclassman, and the underclassmen cheered.

“Charge!” someone shouted.

The two sides ran toward each other through the knee-deep snow, tossing snowballs at anyone within range.

Many snowballs turned into dust in mid-air, so people improvised. After hundreds of people walked on the snow, it started to solidify, and the snowball fighters picked up large chunks and tossed them on top of people. Some people kicked and scooped the snow to spray others.

The sides retreated to gather more snow to throw. They soon charged again, and then retreated. They repeated this pattern for nearly an hour. All the while, the improvisation became more and more creative.

There was a yellow shovel with the name Mike Dayak written on it, but nobody seemed to know who Mike Dayak was, and the shovel ended up in many people’s hands.

“You got to get the shovel,” Michael Israel, a snowball fighter on the underclassmen side, said. “Everyone goes after you, but you can get everyone.”

As Israel said this, Max got hold of the shovel. He scooped up snow on the upperclassmen side, ran across and dumped it on several underclassmen.

Shortly after this, two people collided in the center and fell down. They began to wrestle and both sides charged.

There was a chaotic attempt to bury the two people in snow, and snow flew everywhere, like a cartoon-style dust cloud. Once the snow dust cleared, the two people who originally fell had disappeared amid the madness.

Pitt students Kim Payne and Bonnie La carried a small, plastic garbage bin full of snow toward the front line of the upperclassmen.

“We just found it sitting there so we filled it up,” Payne said. “We call it conspicuous trash can, CT.”

The two young women carried CT to the center during a charge and dumped its entirety onto one unfortunate underclassman.

Suddenly, the upperclassmen charged through the underclassmen and grabbed the chair to bring it over to their own side. Pitt student Stephanie Mehalic sat in the chair, and the upperclassmen celebrated.

“Give her a bunch of snowballs,” someone shouted.

Several young men lifted the chair, with Mehalic, into the air. They carried her toward the other side as she tossed snowballs at the underclassmen.

This marked the point where the snowball fight turned into a ‘capture the chair’ battle, and snow became simply ammunition.

Both sides captured the chair several times, and it often involved a tug of war. The chair somehow remained intact.

After the upperclassmen had recaptured the chair — and the shovel — Nicholas Bazzell sat in it and was lifted into the air, waving the shovel in celebration. Upperclassmen carried Bazzell, who is not a student and was just fighting for whichever side he was on, toward the Cathedral.

The upperclassmen thought they had won, but the underclassmen charged toward the Cathedral. CJ Johnson, a Pitt freshman, sat on the chair with Bazzell.

Instead of fighting over it once more, the two young men shouted “Unity!”

Both sides banded together to lift up the chair in which both Bazzell and Johnson were sitting. They attempted to carry it up to the flagpole, but Bazzell and Johnson soon fell to the ground.

“We can do this,” someone shouted.

Some students carried the chair to the flagpole, as Bazzell and Johnson lifted into the air. All the other participants decided to gather around the chair for a photo-op.

The snowball fighters raised their hands in the air as a handful of people took photos from the lawn.

“U-S-A! U-S-A!” they shouted.

They had just completed an epic winter battle in less than an hour, and the Winter Olympics are only a few days away.

“P-I-T-T Let’s Go Pitt!” soon followed.

Afterward, the once untouched knee-deep snow on the Cathedral lawn was almost completely packed down, and people who walked on it no longer sunk into it.