The Northern Iowa Panthers put the beat down on the Indiana State Sycamores 62-7 in front of the Panther families on family weekend. The score itself demonstrates how the Panthers came out on the right foot this week. The offense started with some underneath routes that worked well before airing it out later in the game. It is the easy games like these I keep mentioning that results in Pat Grace throwing down the field the entire time. The defense continued to do its thing. So rather than continue writing about how UNI dominated, let us talk about family weekend!
My sister’s family and my mom decided to come up for family weekend. My sister has two children, a boy who is nearly four years old and a girl who is two. The boy also happens to be into trains. UNI just so happens to have a model train lab in the Computer Science Department. I was going to demonstrate it for my nephew, but unfortunately, the professor had it in disrepair for hardware upgrades. We went in and took a look at it anyways. We also got to stop by the Biology open house to look at some various animals, insects, and bones. Then we swung into Lang Hall which houses the Earth Sciences. There were a lot of fossils, including the head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, in the hallways. The boy, who is also into dinosaurs, enjoyed this. Then we hit the dining centers for free rootbeer floats. Eventually, we even made it to the game!
The game was a lot of fun too. I sat in the student section since that is where my free ticket is located. Fortunately, a friend saved me a front row seat since I was entertaining my family and could not get there in time myself. My family had reserved seats in the upper section of the dome roughly along thirty yard line. There was not much communication with them for the first half other than trying to get my nephew to see where I was after the first quarter while the crowd was sitting down. During halftime, I found my nephew and brother-in-law returning with popcorn and a drink. When I asked my nephew what he thought of the game, I was told “they need to start over because the one didn’t know what they were doing.” I am told he was repeating what he got told about a penalty, but I think the boy was simply being smart enough to realize UNI was dominating.
During the middle of the fourth quarter, I had my family move down behind where I was sitting because the crowd was emptying quickly thanks to the score. When I brought my nephew up to the front row so he could look down at the football players directly below us, he brought the foam finger my sister bought for him. Upon getting to see the players just a few feet below him, he was, quite frankly, in awe. As the game was winding down, a few past UNI football players came down next to us to talk to some of the current players. They took a liking to the kid and got a couple of the players to give my nephew their armbands. So he now has an armband from #88 Maurice Turner and two armbands from #13 Pat Grace.
Family weekend wrapped up nicely after the game. We went down onto the field and the kids played with a Panther football my sister also bought for them. They seemed to enjoy this to the point we were there until security asked us to leave. Then my nephew had a meltdown for a moment. However, to top off the day, we went to Pepper’s Grill and Sport’s Pub for dinner. This is easily my favorite restaurant in Cedar Falls for its amazing food and televisions everywhere showing any football game on at the time. In short, it was a great day and hopefully, my nephew has successfully been recruited as a Panther.