Aloha, my fellow Huskies!
Out of the kindness of their hearts, the editorial board of this blog has allowed me to join the staff as one of their two newest writers. As a fifth-generation Husky and lifelong fan of all things UW, it’s truly an honor and I can’t wait to begin contributing to the blog.
A little bit about me: I grew up in NE Seattle, a mile or so away from campus. This proximity to the UW led to an interesting relationship with the school from an early age. I grew up getting shuttled down 40th Ave NE from my parents’ house to the Center for Urban Horticulture, where I would hop out and walk across the Union Bay Natural Area to games at Hec Ed and Husky Stadium. I hung out with a number of childhood friends who lived in UW student family housing. In fact, if I had to guess, maybe a quarter of my friends had at least one parent who worked for the UW in some capacity. When I wanted to go bowling, my dad would take me to the HUB. Wizards of the Coast on the Ave (became Tower Records and is now Urban Outfitters) was my childhood arcade. Even if you weren’t going to a game, you had to be aware of gameday gridlock traffic on NE Seattle streets. Campus was just as much of a short cut past 45th or Montlake Blvd than anything else.
The UW has always been there in my life. Both of my parents, my older brother, and sister-in-law are alumni. My wonderful girlfriend is an alumna. So you can probably guess that when it was time for me to pick a college to attend, I ended up going to...WSU!? Oops, yeah, I screwed that one up. Don’t worry, I transferred after a year and graduated from the UW three years later in 2012. Why did I go to WSU? I thought I wanted to be different. I didn’t think I could live in NE Seattle another four years after spending essentially my whole life there. But all it took was one year on the Palouse for me to realize that nothing beats home (and that I was a city slicker who couldn’t handle the cold). Nothing beats Montlake.
My freshman year in Pullman included the 2008 Crapple Cup. I stood in the student section that day with a WSU sweatshirt on over my UW t-shirt and told myself I didn’t care who won the game. But as I watched the WSU fans storm the field after Nico Grasu’s double-overtime field goal to leave the Huskies winless on the season, I felt sick. At that moment, that I knew I couldn’t pretend I didn’t care about the Huskies. Those were my Dawgs out there, and I would never abandon them again.
So here I am eight years later with a BA and two minors from the UW. I’ve never been back to Pullman and currently live in West Seattle. I couldn’t be more excited about how this football season has turned out and am looking forward to watching the core of our young basketball team develop, while enjoying the play of Markelle Fultz (for one year). Mostly, I’m just thrilled and grateful that I get to contribute to this amazing blog and share my thoughts about the Dawgs with this great community. Go Dawgs and Pullman sucks (I would know). Eugene is chill, but Oregon sucks too. Woof!