As I am sure all of you know, this past weekend of October 19^th was one of the biggest weekends at Penn State all year. With college gameday, the 7:30 primetime spot, and the whiteout against Michigan, this weekend had little to no downtime scheduled, especially for me and my team. In order to accurately describe everything that went down this weekend, I decided to break the day into two blogs. For the first blog regarding this one weekend, I wanted to start by talking about College Gameday and how this was one of the most thrilling and special things I have ever done and will always remember.

College Gameday, an American College Football tradition chooses one school each weekend to film their show at. The decide which college to go to based off of the fan base, the game rivalry, and the rankings of both teams, among other things. This year, Penn State was picked yet again for the whiteout game for the third year in a row because the atmosphere we have is simply unmatchable. The College Gameday traditions started, for me at least, on Friday as I was chosen to be in the pre-show the day before.

After reporting to the Hub lawn at 3, we were greeted by College Gameday employees and taken backstage. As the sections behind us began to fill, it become real to me that the show I had seen on the television every weekend for years now was being filmed right in front of me and I was going to be a part of it. A lot more people came out to the show than I expected and while the crowd was big in my eyes, it was nothing like the crowd I was going to see the next morning. This being the pre-show, nothing too exciting was going on other than me standing in the corner, waving and smiling to the camera, however it provided me with a little taste as to what was going to go down the next day.

Unfortunately for the students, College Gameday has a start time of 9am, which doesn’t sound that bad until you realize that a school this big with this much school spirit is going to have many kids eager to be in the front row. Luckily for me, I did not have to get up at the astonishing times that other students did just to be seen by the camera once.

My wake-up time was at a beautiful 6:30am, much better than the 2am other students had planned to do. At 6:30 I put on sweatpants over my pajamas and my friends and I on the cheer team walked down to the waffle shop for our team breakfast. With my preordered pancakes on the stove before I even walked in, all the cheerleaders filled the restaurant while the line outside the door only grew. As we finished eating all the freshman walked back to one dorm in order to get ready for the actual gameday.

Since my team is so big and everyone wants to be on television, my coach split the filming into two sections, the first section for the all-girl team was 9-10:30, and the coed section, mine, was 10:30-12. Thankfully, this allowed me plenty of time to go back and get ready before arriving for College Gameday. After getting ready, we walked to the Hub lawn and started taking pictures with people in the crowd and with each other. We reported to our side of the stage, and the fun began quickly after that.

Once it was a commercial break, we quickly switched teams behind the camera and as they counted down, we were suddenly on camera in a matter of seconds and boy was I lucky. We had designated lines that we had been assigned to since the beginning of the season and it just so happened my position was just off the shoulder of the cast sitting in their chairs. Another lucky thing for me, my partner is 6’7. Tall Right. Every time the camera was on the cast, I found myself in the air in direct view of the camera. My position was golden. They placed televisions all over the place not in view of the camera so we could watch the actual show while it was being filmed and I could not believe the amount of time I found myself waving through the camera to see it as its happening on TV. After what felt like 30 minutes of waving and smiling (which in reality was probably 5 minutes) we would take a commercial break and I was able to come down from the stunt and rest my cheeks from all the smiles. This repeated about 10 times as we switched between commercial and shooting and I was in the prime spot the whole time.

During commercial breaks we would turn around and face the thousands of attendees and cheer them on and get them excited. While we do cheer for many more people on the actual field, this was so much more personable, and I was able to see the faces and the smile of the people standing in front of me.

College Gameday was a truly amazing experience for me and I cannot believe the opportunities I am given as a cheerleader to be involved in events like this. After the show was over, we got to go onstage and take photos with the cast of College Gameday. When the event was over and I was able to check my phone again, my messages were flooding in of people sending me pictures of myself on TV. I was truly amazed. Having already completed so much that morning, I was so tired, but my day didn’t stop there, in fact, it got even more exciting as the day went on, but you’ll have to wait until next week to hear my experience at the Whiteout game.