Posts tagged ‘Beaver Stadium’
More on the Helicopter Ride
I got an e-mail late last night from Maxwell Kruger, a Penn State student who’s an avid photographer and whose images we’re hoping to feature in our November-December issue.
Apparently he was at the game yesterday, saw the helicopter flying by the stadium, and took a photo. Only later did he find out that I was the person in the back seat with the door open.
I feel really lucky to have a shot of myself doing this. So thanks, Maxwell!
You can see about a dozen of the aerial shots from yesterday at live.psu.edu, and a slide show with some extra photos at this link.
Tina Hay, editor
P.S. You can subscribe to our blog by clicking on the link in the upper right hand part of our main page. You can choose to get the blog via RSS feed or by e-mail. I personally recommend the latter because (a) it’s very simple—you’ll get an e-mail each morning with the day’s previous post(s)—and (b) I’ve never really understood how the whole RSS-feed concept works anyway.
Buzzing the Stadium
The state troopers were good sports, and one of them even took my picture.
I got a little bored during the third quarter of the Penn State-Syracuse game this afternoon, so I decided to hop on a state police helicopter and go for a ride.
OK, that’s not exactly how it happened.
What happened was more like this: I’d been thinking that going along in the police helicopter while they’re monitoring game-day traffic might make interesting fodder for my column in our next issue. So earlier this week I called Annemarie Mountz ’84, manager of the news bureau in Public Information, because I remembered she had done something similar last year. (You can see her photos from that trip here. Note that she had gorgeous blue skies and sunshine for her ride, while today was cloudy and overcast. Not that I’m jealous or anything.)
The relatively new Eastview Terrace residence-hall complex, on East College Avenue.
Anyway, Annemarie put me in touch with Clifford Lutz ’75, who is assistant chief of University Police Services. He’s the guy who coordinates the game-day police operations, so he made arrangements for the state police to take me up.
I got to the stadium by 9:45 a.m., as instructed, but the helicopter wasn’t there yet—it had been diverted to an emergency in DuBois. So I hung around a while, went over to visit Paul Frankhouser’s famous tailgate, and strolled some of the other tailgates.
The alumni center.
Eventually I called Asst. Chief Lutz (who I’m told spends the day on top of the press box roof) and he said it could be a while; he’d call me. So I went inside the stadium and joined some friends who happened to have an extra ticket today.
I saw most of the first half and part of the third quarter, while noting with dismay that it’s next to impossible to get cell phone service inside the stadium. That’s because 110,000 other people are texting and making calls and sending photos. I had visions of going home after the game and finding out that I missed the helicopter ride because they couldn’t reach me by phone.
And then partway through the third quarter I got a text message from Asst. Chief Lutz:
Sgt. Fox and Sgt. Cochran, the nicest state troopers you'd ever want to meet....
Ready to go in about 15?
So I jumped out of my seat, said goodbye to my friends, and hustled down to the grassy area near Jeffrey Field where the helicopters land. I met the two very nice state troopers who were piloting the thing, they gave me some instructions, and up we went.
I got a great aerial tour of campus, took 274 photos in approximately 20 minutes, learned a bit about what the state police helicopter detail does, and pretty much didn’t want it to end. (I never did get to see how they monitor traffic … maybe another time.)
Oh, and contrary to the title of this blog entry, we did not buzz the stadium—the state police really prefer not to fly directly over the stadium when the game is in progress. But they did take me close enough for some good photos.
By the way, I got to fly with my door open. Makes for better photos that way—and the exhilaration of having nothing but air between you all the sights can’t be beat.
I’ll have more to say about the whole experience in my column for our November-December issue. Unless I quit my job between now and then and go to helicopter-pilot school or something….
Tina Hay, editor
Update: You can see about a dozen of the aerial photos at live.psu.edu or, if you’re really into it, a slide show of about 30 on Flickr.com.
A Penn State Sunset
A couple of Penn State photos for you:
I happened to be driving past Beaver Stadium early last evening, and I thought it and the sky looked gorgeous in the late-day sun. So I went home, got my camera, and came back. This is maybe the best of the shots I got:
(That’s the moon, by the way, on the right-hand side of the photo.)
Obviously the wide-angle lens distorted the shape of the stadium a bit, so you may or may not like that effect.
Then I turned my camera in the other direction, toward the sun, to catch some of the farm buildings in silhouette behind the IM fields.
You can click on either photo to see them bigger.
Tina Hay, editor
P.S. Just a reminder that you can get snippets of Penn State-related news even more often by following me on Twitter.
Fireworks Spectacular
The area around Beaver Stadium was the site of a terrific fireworks display last night, part of the annual Central Pennsylvania 4th Fest, which claims to have one of the top three fireworks displays in the country. They’re definitely outstanding—they start at 9:20 p.m., are choreographed to music on a local radio station (93.7 The Bus), and last a good 40 minutes.
I have friends who live off Puddintown Road, below Beaver Stadium, and they (like everyone who lives off Puddintown Road) host a Fourth-of-July picnic and fireworks-watching party. Around 9:00 p.m. we strolled through their backyard over to a field on the Bathgate Farm, where we had an excellent view of the show.
I set up my tripod, dug out the instructions I had printed from the Web about shooting fireworks (one good set of tips is here), and fired away.
You can watch a slide show consisting of 15 of the photos I shot last night here. You won’t see anything “Penn Statey” in them, alas—they’re just your basic, generic fireworks photos. Someday I’ll have to figure out a different vantage point to get shots of the fireworks with Beaver Stadium in them.
Tina Hay, editor
Your Helpful Alumni Association Staff is Ready to Greet You….
Uh, Bob, can you get some touch-up paint on that goalpost before Thursday?
This week is a big deal around the Alumni Association. No, not because it’s Magazine Deadline Week (which, alas, it is), but because it’s time for Traditional Reunion Weekend.
Starting Thursday, we’ll be welcoming back 800-plus grads from 1959 and assorted other years for four days of reunion activities. It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing for Association staff; we all help in some way, whether it’s staffing the registration tables or coordinating library tours or helping load the buses to Saturday’s All-Class Luncheon.
Among the most popular of the activities are the tours of Beaver Stadium, and this morning a bunch of staff headed up to the stadium for a run-through and a briefing. Apparently Bob Barlock from our Membership unit must have been one of them, as you can see here from the picture he immediately posted on his Facebook page.
Tina Hay, editor
Getting Ready For “The Great Show”
From the “it’s never too early” department: The marketing folks on the other side of campus are already ramping up the hype for the 2009 home football schedule. In addition to annual events like Homecoming and the White Out (or White House, apparently), we’ve now got theme games like ”Classic Day” and “Favorite Jersey Day.” Not sure if traditionalists will see the need for such things, but new- and old-school fans alike should appreciate the visual below.
If I did my math right, kick-off is only 110 days away.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
From “Faculty Kid” to College Football Expert
I’ll state my bias straight up: College GameDay, ESPN’s college football studio show, is one of my favorite TV shows of any genre. I love it because Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstreit are experts who don’t take themselves too seriously. (Also, because mascots are very cool.) They have fun, and isn’t that what sports are supposed to be?
Fowler brought that vibe to campus last Friday afternoon when he spoke to a group of journalism students and college football fans. Malcolm Moran, director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism (additional disclosure: I am a board member), gave Fowler a big buildup, calling him the “ringleader” of GameDay. Fowler interjected, dryly, “Babysitter.”
Partly, Fowler came to campus to give students an inside look at the TV journalism business and his road to success. He did that humorously and earnestly—to the point that he once laughed and apologized for sounding like Tony Robbins.
“You have to have that genuine passion,” Fowler said. “Never have to fake it, and you’ll be ahead of the game.”
But he also has a Penn State connection. His father, Knox Fowler, was a theatre professor at the University in the mid-’70s, and during his junior-high years, Chris lived in State College—in the same neighborhood as our class notes editor, Julie Nelson ’86, who can attest to Fowler’s early love of pick-up football.
Fowler, a Midwest boy and die-hard Chicago Blackhawks fan, learned to love college football then, too. “Faculty kids” could go to a game for $1. The kids used to pass tickets through a chain-link fence at the south end of Beaver Stadium, which was more primitive back then. So, Fowler noted, “you could get four kids in for a buck if you were pretty sly.” (Julie, daughter of a Penn State accounting professor, confirmed this.)
Other notes from Fowler’s talk:
—He was so animated and candid discussing why he thinks college football should scrap the BCS and institute an eight-team playoff that his wife, sitting in the audience, cringed.
—On college football: “There’s something unique about the passion and the way a campus builds up the week before a game.”
—On Penn State’s game-day atmosphere: “When you guys behave yourself, the Whiteout is the most tremendous display of school spirit with students supporting their team in all of college football.”
—On GameDay: “The show is almost always careening out of control.”
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Clearing the Air
Fans going into Beaver Stadium for tomorrow’s Blue-White Game would be smart to bring seat cushions (those metal bleachers are as unforgiving as ever), hats (the folks at Accuweather are predicting 86 and sunny) and a program to figure out all the new names and faces on the field. But they can leave their cigarettes back at the tailgate.
Starting with Saturday’s game, the Pennsylvania Clean Indoor Air Act will go into effect at Beaver Stadium — meaning there’s no smoking anywhere inside the stadium gates. For at least the past few years, smokers have been able to light up in the outer stairwells and walkways; from now on, any smoking once you’ve had your ticket scanned at the gate is strictly prohibited.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
“I Thought Football Season Was Over?”
38 points, none for style...
So texted a friend of mine this morning, upon seeing the final score of Penn State’s road upset of No. 16 Illinois last night in Champaign. The reason for his feigned confusion? When the Nittany Lion football team beat their counterparts from Illinois in Beaver Stadium last fall, the final score was 38-24. Last night, the men’s basketball team won with 38 points of its own.
Ugly? You could say that. The AP reports that the 38-33 win is the lowest scoring Division I game in four years, and it’s Penn State’s lowest scoring output in a victory since a 24-9 win over Pitt — in 1952. Hard as it was to watch (and if you missed the Big Ten Network telecast, you can see the, um, “highlights” here) , the result is a thing of beauty for Penn State hoop fans. With their third win over a top-20 team this season (and second on the road, after a 72-68 upset of then No. 9 Michigan State in East Lansing three weeks ago), the Nittany Lions improved to 19-8 overall, 8-6 in the Big Ten. Three wins in their (at least) five remaining games — four regular-season games, plus at least one more in next month’s Big Ten tournament — should be enough to get Penn State into the NCAA tournament for the first time in eight years.
For now, they remain firmly on the tournament bubble, meaning the only guarantee is that every game left is a big one.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
I Can’t See… Why Someone Would Do This
Not that it looked much like him anyway...
It’s a quiet news week here in Happy Valley — the students still out on break, the winter weather strongly encouraging folks to stay indoors — but someone earned themselves a headline over the weekend by stealing the glasses off the Joe Paterno statue that stands outside Beaver Stadium. This happened a few days ago, apparently, but we just heard about it today.
I don’t really have anything else to say about this.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Subscribe
