Maryland, My Maryland

I get a lot of heat from folks around here about my alma mater, University of Maryland, College Park.
First, lots of people, whether they're ACC fans, or SEC fans, want to know why any athletic department would go with a "turtle" as its mascot.
I can't answer that.
I can stand proud in the fact that my TERRAPINS beat Georgia Tech (same team that beat Clemson last week!) in a nail-biting home game, and my wife and I got to see it in person.
Maryland football games are a part of who I am. I spent four years watching from the stands, sweating profusely most days in my all-wool marching band uniform.
A good gameday experience for me was getting up at 7 a.m. to be on the practice field at 8 a.m., where the 200-member Might Sound Of Maryland would practice for an hour and a half before breaking to go eat.
Gameday eating meant my parents would bring enough spaghetti pie, sweet tea, brownies, pound cake and fruit to feed the entire trombone section--and then some.
Then it was time to suit up and march to the stadium.
By the time opening kick-off happened, I was usually covered in sweat and fully hoarse from whooping and yelling and generally acting like an idiot, all in the name of school spirit.
Hours later, I would pack up my little blue Honda and Sarah and I would hit the road back to my house in Mt. Airy.
The road we would travel--New Hampshire Avenue/Highway 650, was tree-lined, and in the fall there was never a more beautiful trip.
This past weekend, we did just that.
Hoarse from cheering on my Terps, we cllimbed in the car (no longer the Blue Honda) and hit the road home, to visit friends this time. My parents don't live there anymore.
Any trip to Maryland is special for me. It's where I grew up, and, despite my birth certificate (place of birth: Presbyterian Hospital, Charlotte, North Carolina), I still identify with Maryland the most.
There's something about being in the big city (Washington, D.C.) and seeing the College Park campus that fills me with pride.
The trips back to the Carolinas are sometimes bittersweet. Long after the signal of DC101 (the best terrestrial radio station there is!) has faded out, and soon after I merge back onto I-95 south of Richmond, I am ready to get back to South Carolina, and our new home, and my job here.
This weekend was also special because I attended a mini-reunion of sorts last Friday night. My senior year at Maryland, I was part of the College of Journalism's Capital News Service TV Bureau. Ten students manned the bureau, where we covered news in and around Prince George's, Montgomery, and Anne Arundel Counties. We would produce a 15-minute newscast, four nights a week, that went out to over 400,000 households. Who knows if anyone watched.
But what we gained in that semester was precious, amazing, incredible experience in television news in some really remarkable times.
I'll never forget 9/11, when we put on a 9-minute newscast, wrought with technical and editorial mistakes, and my professor would only say, "we live to cover another day."
That semester, that class, and those classmates provided my first taste of why I love TV news, and provided inspiration that still fuels me to this day.
Five out of the ten members of my class were there Friday night, along with a few dozen other classes from subsequent years. All of the professors showed up.
It was truly an awesome night. I am glad we made the trip up!
It's good to go back home.
And it's even better when the Terps win!

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