We Were All in the Zone…

October 7, 2012 at 6:53 pm Tina Hay Leave a comment

…the Alumni Zone, that is.

I spent Saturday afternoon in the Ashenfelter Multi-Sport Facility, just below Beaver Stadium, helping staff the “Alumni Zone,” a post-Homecoming-game tailgate hosted by the Alumni Association. This was the third year for the Alumni Zone, but the first time I’d ever been able to be there, and it was pretty impressive.

Patrons pay a flat fee for about three hours of music, games, beer and wine, unlimited food, and a chance to meet some Penn State celebrities. This year’s celebrities include several coaches, such as Cael Sanderson (wrestling), Mark Pavlik (volleyball), and Beth Alford-Sullivan (track/cross country); plus several Olympians (rower Natalie Dell ’07 and runner Dominique Blake ’08, among others); and pop singer Bex, who got her start as a Penn State musical theatre student.

The music came from the Phyrst Phamly Reunion Band, pictured above, and from the Alumni Blue Band.

We had a sellout crowd of well over 700, and a great range of ages as well—alumni from the 1950s, if not farther back, on up to 2012, and lots of little kids running around in the games area. Just a great family event.

I thought I’d share a couple of photos I took during the afternoon. First, here’s Natalie Dell telling the crowd that “the only thing better than being an Olympian is being a member of the United States team—and the only thing better than being a member of the United States team is being a Penn Stater.”

Here’s Alumni Blue Band member Larry Parko ’78, ’84g, who’s pretty easy to spot in a crowd:

Here’s Dominique Blake, a Penn State grad and a bronze medal winner for Jamaica at the London games, hanging out with the Alumni Association’s membership team:

And here’s a very young Penn State fan sleeping through the whole thing.

You can see more photos from the event on the Alumni Association’s Facebook page. Kudos to Michele Moore ’85 and the rest of the Alumni Association’s events team for pulling off an event that made a lot of Penn State fans very happy.

Tina Hay, editor

The Penn Stater Magazine