Pilot

Brief background narration

Dialogue:

The snow has melted, the grass is muddy, the sky is grey and the temperature is 34 degrees. Spring term is here.

As students unpack from an early break, we realize the long winter is about to end and ten weeks of endless fun, chaos and partying lies ahead. But if we don’t play our excuses correctly, we will be attending summer term.

It’s a difficult task of balancing school work, a social life and for some such as myself, a sport. However, after freshman year’s trial and error and sophomore year’s fine tuning we discover a way to be successful yet, slack off at the same time. Unfortunately like high school, junior year is the toughest and we must master this art of being successfully apathetic and receive decent grades because right after senior year, the only vacations we get might be a few sick days or a permanent one.

So until the first morning people wake up to an unpredicted snowfall and are forced to do the walk of shame down 38th Street in sandals and shorts, we temporarily become discouraged however, our mission remains, party, pass out, pass.

And what’s a better way to end winter term than with a 2 week break? While most students flock to Panama City or Cancun or are still in class because their spring break is actually during the spring, the Mercyhurst Women’s Lacrosse team set sail to Farmville, Virginia.

Other sport teams on campus got the privilege of going to Florida to practice and enjoyed the luxury of flying while the 28 of us piled onto what we like to call the “Laker Shaker”, it’s what the dance team travels in and what we drove to Florida last spring break. After an hour of our coach playing Tetris, our stick bags were finally packed and the bathroom-less shuttle to the mall departed for Farmville, Virginia.

We realized why it was called Farmville an hour before our arrival at the Homewood Suites in Sunchase Village. There were rundown Dairy Corners on every corner, flying confederate flags, overalls, farms and to top it off, Virginia’s largest Wal-mart was 10 minutes away from our hotel.

Now, I don’t mind the hillbilly way. I’m from Cincinnati, 20 minutes away from Kentucky, 2 hours away from our family farm in Indiana and seconds away from the fishing and swimming hole along the river behind my backyard. However, there is nothing to do in Farmville, which made the trip more miserable than we predicted.

Our plan was to arrive Thursday, scrimmage Saturday, and leave the following Wednesday. The days in between were set for practice (apparently we could not do that in Erie). We asked why we are going to Virginia to scrimmage an Ohio team and we were told that the weather is supposed to be nice and we don’t have to pay for the field. However, even with these perks it was still expensive, so we agreed to eat Longwood University’s cafeteria food to lower the price to $320.00. It was a poor settlement decision considering the fact that before we left, we read that snow was in the forecast.

So we get there, practice for a couple days and then during our scrimmage, the peak of our spring break, it begins to freezing rain. We win, go back to the hotel, propose leaving and practicing in the rec at Mercyhurst since it is predicted to get bad in Virginia and we would have to practice inside anyway. We’re told it’s supposed to get better.

It snows the first time in 9 years the next day.

We are told we can get the indoor facility but that was false so we go bowling. We return to the hotel and lounge around until dinner.

As we walk up the steps to the quad we notice the natives enjoying the unfamiliar elements that have not been seen in almost a decade whereas we are quite familiar and sick of snow. Anyway, they think we should enjoy it too and as some boy yells "Giet Murcyherrst!" we are bombarded with snowballs. We barely escape and arrive to the cafeteria. After dinner, we run to the bus as Farmvillians heave snowballs at us. The mayhem begins.

Once on the bus, the snowballs continue to fly from all directions and hit our hideous band bus. We finally realize its been 5 minutes and the bus has not moved. We are stuck in a war zone.As swarms of boys surround our bus we understand how unwelcome we are. We are ordered to go to the other dinning hall so the team devises an escape plan and in pairs we leave and make a dash for cover.

Again, our proposal of going home was denied.

Since the practice field was covered in snow the next morning, we were forced to run the steps of the hotel as a form of conditioning; an hour later we get news that we’re going home.

With pulled calves and hours of video to prove our tale, we finally arrive to Mercyhurst never being so happy to see it because we realize spring term is here.