UConn Makes It Interesting, and Rose's First Trip to a Game
Cleveland State42
UConn24
- Game
- 2031 Week 7
- Site
- Home
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 7-0
Vikings 42, UConn 24, at home. Seven and oh.
Eighteen points. That’s our closest game of the year, folks, and if you’d told me in 2024 that an eighteen-point win would be “close,” I’d have asked you to step outside. But UConn came to play. They hung around. They made our guys work in the third quarter. And our guys did the work.
And here’s what I’ll remember: Rose came. Bridget and Eli drove up from Athens for the weekend, and Rose, at three months, attended her first Vikings game, in my arms, in a little green hat that Donna knitted. Vikings green. Forest green. Donna made sure. When Bridget saw it she said, “Mom, that’s sneaky.” Donna said, “It’s autumn, sweetheart. It’s a seasonal color.”
Rose slept through the whole first half. In the third quarter, when the crowd sang the fight song, she woke up, looked around at forty thousand people singing, and didn’t cry. Not once. She just looked. Then she grabbed my nose. Folks, I’ve been to a national championship, and nothing has ever felt like that.
Three pierogi. The game wasn’t our best. The day was.
An eighteen-point home win over UConn, the narrowest margin of the season. The Vikings looked, for the first time in 2031, like a team thinking about next week. Next week is Ohio, in Athens. Ohio is undefeated. The Vikings are undefeated. One of them won’t be.
I met Rose. I held her for about forty seconds before Mickey took her back. She looked at me with great suspicion, the exact expression I’ve seen in my own mirror for forty-five years. I said, “Hello, Rose. I’m Ken. I doubt things.” She sneezed. Bridget said, “That means she likes you.” Mickey said, “That means she’s allergic to doubters.” Eli said, “It means she sneezed.” I like Eli.
Teresa held her next. Rose stopped squirming immediately. Teresa does that to people. Mickey, Donna, Bridget and Eli all looked at me at the same time. I looked at the field. The field was very interesting. My coat pocket was, too.
Back and forth
Rose grabbed my nose, Kenny.
She sneezed at me. I’ve decided that’s a review.
Everybody looked at you when Teresa held her.
I noticed. I looked at the field. The field was having a very important third quarter.
Our closest game of the year, a granddaughter’s first game in a seasonal shade of forest green, and five people looking at Ken while Ken looked very hard at a football field.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.