Grateful for Pitt sports experience

I was never actually on The Pitt News sports staff, but it sure as hell looks like I was…. I was never actually on The Pitt News sports staff, but it sure as hell looks like I was.

In the last two years, I attended three press conferences, I was one of the four competitors in the weekly football and basketball picks, I stood next to Dick Vitale at basketball media day, I stayed in hotel rooms paid for by The Pitt News during Pitt’s two Sweet Sixteen appearances, and this isn’t even the first sports column I’ve written.

I can attribute this fortunate turn of events to being a fan obsessed with college basketball and the sports editor’s best friend.

Last year, I went to Lexington, Ky., in The Pitt News rental car to see Pitt lose the heartbreaker to Kent State. After we finally sent the game stories over the Internet to the editors back in Pittsburgh, I slept in a bed that folded out of the wall in the Bluegrass Suite of the Hyatt Hotel and we mourned the end of that season.

This year was my last chance to watch Pitt play as a Pitt student, so I wasn’t about to miss a thing. Karen and I stayed up all night in the Union back in October to score season tickets to the Pete because the first lottery had failed. During the season, we went to every home game – except when we were in New Jersey for Christmas break and Punta Cana for spring break. And we feel really bad about that.

I was there to see us beat the only team that beat us twice the year before. I was there to see us beat the team that later won this year’s National Championship. I was there to see us beat the team that stole the Big East Championship away from us last year.

Distance was no obstacle this year either. I saw Pitt win at West Virginia, Villanova and Rutgers, and three times at Madison Square Garden to win the Big East Championship, which was more satisfying than any Tournament win.

You would think seeing the basketball players on the court at least once a week for more than a year would make me jaded or at least not fazed by seeing them around campus. It actually had the opposite effect: I still get weak in the knees and star-struck when one of them gets on the South Oakland shuttle or walks into Cumpie’s. Without ever speaking to them, I have made them a big part of my life at Pitt.

I consider myself lucky to have experienced Pitt sports through The Pitt News. I followed the basketball team around the country; the staff deep-fried a turkey before the football games; professors, classmates and random strangers recognized me as that girl who picks the games in the paper while they would somehow never recognize Karen; and I was the only one at copy desk who could explain to the staff terms such as “the charity stripe” and “a double double.”

A student’s time in college is defined by many things. Sort of being on The Pitt News sports staff is one I will treasure forever.

This is Erin Brachlow’s last day in The Pitt News. She will miss copy desk, the sned and the sports editor very much.