The Penn Stater Magazine

Nittany Lions For A Day

June 14, 2010 at 3:07 pm Ryan Jones 1 comment

Last week marked the fifth annual Penn State Football Fantasy Camp, the four-day fan experience that lets diehard Nittany Lion fans experience life as a (sort of) Penn State football player. I was lucky enough to cover the first camp four years ago as a Penn Stater freelance writer, not long before I joined the magazine’s staff. (For some reason, they’ve still got a picture of me on the camp Website — that’s me in the blue #22 jersey. Nice face, huh?) This year also marked the first annual Ladies X’s & O’s camp, a one-day event that sold out with 50 women, including Kelley Paterno, wife of Penn State QB coach Jay Paterno ’91.

The women arrived on campus Friday morning and got a crash course in football formations, terminology and play-calling, much of it from assistant coach Mike McQueary ’97. On Friday afternoon, they took to the Beaver Stadium turf for a pep talk from Joe Paterno — you can check out the video on the GOPSF.com Facebook page — and a game of flag football, which ended in a 6-6 tie.

Afterward, I asked Gloria Stanulis Spicer ’70 — at 62 the camp’s second-oldest player and a longtime season ticket holder — about her impressions. Her first was how competitive her fellow campers were. “On the bus and at lunch, they all seemed so nice and polite,” she said. “But once the game started? Oh, no.”

The other thing Spicer was left with? What a blast she had out on the field. “It just went so fast — after the game, everybody was like, ‘Can we play some more?’ We really wanted it to continue.” Camp organizers haven’t committed to doing the camp again next year, but if they do, they can count on at least one returnee: Spicer says she’ll be there, and plans to bring her daughter, Meg Spicer ’06, along, too.

Ryan Jones, senior editor

Entry filed under: Joe Paterno, Penn State football. Tags: Football Fantasy Camp, Gloria Stanulis Spicer, Jay Paterno, Kelly Paterno, Ladies X's & O's Camp, Mike McQueary.