Manti Te'o's "Dead Girlfriend" Story? A complete hoax

[Larkspur]

32. I was born in Chicago, IL

and grew up on ND football and men's basketball.

However, I was also a girl who wanted to play basketball for my schools and am thankful for Title IX. It passed when I was in 7th grade. After it passed, my elementary school provided us with volleyball instead of basketball. I joined the team and eventually played volleyball and basketball in high school. I was a good basketball player, but not as talented a basketball player as the ND and UCONN kids of today.

Back in the early 1990's, a friend of mine used to give me tickets to the UCONN women's games that he didn't want to attend. Eventually, I bought my own set of season tickets through him. I watched in person the UCONN women's games rise from obscurity to national champions. While I'm an ND alumna, I also am a feminist and was glad to witness herstory in the making with the UCONN women's basketball program. I no longer purchase season tickets. They got too expensive and it became a 2 hour hassle to get out of the UCONN parking lots. So now I watched them as well as ND on TV.

After ND joined the Big East, I was glad to watch them. When they played UCONN, I liked both teams so it was hard to root against either, so I rooted for a good game. However, as UCONN piled up the wins against ND, I sided more with my alma mater so that she could make the series more of a rivalry. UCONN needed it as much as ND. It's boring watching UCONN beat teams by 40-60 points. In the first few years, ND used to get psyched out against UCONN, but I'm glad they are over it. Now, the series IS a rivalry.

When I root for teams in national tournaments, I usually root for my alma mater first, then my state of residence followed by my state/region of birth.