Monday, September 10, 2007

Sporting Clays, Virginia Tech, Ocean Isle, Tailgating, beating Lamb U.

The 3rd Annual Daniel Cupit Memorial Young Life Sporting Clays tournament was a huge success. Close to 50 shooters participated in this event. My good friend Chris Rich joined my team and ended up winning a year membership to Shane's Sporting Clays. Since Chris is in Denmark for the next few months, he gave the membership to me! Thanks Chris, I need the practice.Here is Jonathan Smith, myself, and Justin Smith after a long hard day of shootin' On September 1st, my parents, Jimmy, and I went to Blacksburg and saw the Pirates play VaTech. It was a very emotional time at the game as this was the first football game at VaTech since the shooting last April. The ceremony before the game to honor the victims was something I will never forget, capped off by a fly over by two F-15's. This is one of the coolest places I've ever seen a football game...nice background! ESPN's College Gameday was at the game. ECU's defense held VaTech to 33 yards rushing. East Carolina's backup QB threw an interception on the 6 yard line that Tech walked in for 6 and that was pretty much the difference as ECU lost 17-7. Even though they lost, I am very excited about this year's team. Here's a picture of Jimmy and I at our tailgate after the game.

Last week, we went to Ocean Isle with three other couples. We had a great time and the weather was awesome.


Me and Maddie at the beach in front of my new tailgate tent! Thanks mom and dad!!



Maddie and Mommy in the pool...
UNC visited Greenville for only the second time ever on Saturday and wow what a game! We hit the tailgate lots around 1:00pm for the 6:00pm game. My dad, mom, brother, sister-in-law, in-laws all went to Carolina...so we had a "divided" tailgate. (Kelly was the only one at the tailgate who didn't go to either school, but she is also the only one that went to a school whose football team just beat Michigan in "The Big House" and has back-to-back national titles) UNC was up 17-7 at one point only to have ECU come back and tie the game at 17-17. East Carolina went up 31-23 and things were looking great. Then UNC returned a punt for a touchdown and made the two point conversion. ECU's kicker missed three(!) field goals before finally nailing the game winner! Below is a picture of the teams setting up for the final field goal. The crowd was the fourth largest in ECU's history and it was loud. I can't believe I'm about to say this but UNC has a great football team. I was expecting us to beat them by double digits. Their RS Freshman QB burnt our DB's a few times for quick TD's.

Here I am with Kelly--she's glad ECU won because I would have probably been a bad mood!
Any of you Carolina fans reading this: You can use this picture as your desktop background!
Jay Ross--ARRRGGGHHH!!With this game behind them, the real test comes this weekend when we host Southern Miss. USM has won the last 7 contests in Greenville. If ECU wants to turn the corner in college football, this game is a must win. ECU beat Southern Miss down in Hattiesburg last year--so we're looking for two in a row.

ECU 34 UNC 31---Pictures and more to come later!!!