Utah Comes to Town, and Sofia Reyes Learns the Fight Song in Two Languages
Cleveland State34
Utah17
- Game
- 2028 Week 6
- Site
- Home
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 6-0
Vikings 34, Utah 17, at home. Six and oh!
Last year Utah gave us a five-point game the weekend after Thanksgiving. This year we won by seventeen, on a crisp October afternoon with the leaves coming down on Pearl Road and the first real chill off the lake.
I watched from my porch with the Reyes family, because Jess said the kids wanted “the full Mickey experience.” The full Mickey experience is a lawn chair, a little radio, a TV propped in the front window, a thermos of hot cider and a lot of yelling. Sofia Reyes, who’s eight now, announced she’d learned the Vikings fight song “in English and in Spanish.” She’d translated it herself. With her abuela on the phone. The Spanish version has a line in it, Jess told me later, that roughly means “the Vikings are as strong as grandma’s soup.” I’ve decided that’s the official second verse.
Six and oh, my people. I’m keeping my voice down. The neighbors on the other side of the Reyeses have complained about the porch yelling. They’re Browns fans. They have their own problems.
Four pierogi. One goes to Sofia’s abuela, whose soup is apparently very strong.
A seventeen-point win over a physical Utah team. The Vikings are six and oh, Stillwater has been paid back, and next week it’s Texas Tech at home. This isn’t a schedule. It’s a correction with a printed itinerary.
I watched with Teresa at her apartment, a little one-bedroom in Tremont with a radiator that knocks like it’s trying to get in. She’d worked the night before and was half asleep on the couch. In the third quarter she said, without opening her eyes, “Are they winning?” I said yes. She said, “By a lot?” I said yes. She said, “Then why are you sitting like that?” I looked down. I was sitting on the very edge of the cushion, both feet flat, hands clasped like I was waiting to be called into a principal’s office.
She said, “Lean back, Kenny.” I leaned back. It was the first time I’ve leaned back during a Vikings game since 2014.
Back and forth
You leaned back, Kenny?
For one quarter. It was medically supervised.
Sofia translated the fight song!
“As strong as grandma’s soup” is better than the original. I’ll say it in print.
Six and oh, a bilingual fight song with a soup verse, and Ken Hogmanes leaning back on a couch for the first time in fourteen years.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.