I recently attended the Wisconsin Badgers vs. the Northwestern Wildcats football game. This was my first time going to a Badgers game and I felt so excited! My cousin is a freshman at UW-Madison and I stayed in her dorm room. I have not been in a dorm room in two years, so it was a little bit weird going through that experience again. Luckily, I remembered flip flops!
We woke up game-day morning and went to take one of the campus buses to the stadium. When we got off, I was immediately surrounded by a red sea of people heading to the game. There were roses surrounding the stadium, alluding to the Rose Bowl, and they filled the air with a beautiful fragrance as I passed by to get to the gate.
My cousin and I headed to the student section, and the security there was very strict. They made sure that we sat in our specific spot and that we did not take up more than one seat. With a school of about 10,000 students in each grade, there’s a lot of people to fit into one stadium. The stadium in itself was massive. There were six sections just for the students, and the sections filled up by halftime. Everyone around was wearing either red, white, or black, and if you were wearing purple (Northwestern’s color), you were not welcomed anywhere near the student section.
I quickly learned that Badgers fans are very superstitious. I had to jingle my keys during kick-off, yell when the Badgers were on defense, and so many other little things that I quickly grew to love. My favorite was yelling “First Down Badgers” after the announcer said it to shove it in the face of the other team. There were also so many songs that required hand motions and of course I had to sing along. After the Badgers scored, the band played a song and the trombones leaned back and forth. It was so much fun following along with them, going faster and faster to keep up with the trombones. The words to “Varsity” and “If You Want to Be a Badger” quickly became ingrained in my mind.
Last, but not least, came the time between the third and fourth quarters: the infamous “Jump Around.” As soon as the music started playing, everyone in the student section and even the regular sections started jumping around and yelling out the words to the song. The bleachers began to shake and made the loudest noise ever.
I will definitely be back for another game at Camp Randall Stadium. This experience was so much fun, and I will definitely remember this for the rest of my life.
“If you want to be a Badger, just come along with me,
By the light of the bright shining moon!”
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