Last week I got an inside look at the Eagles Training Camp. I lucked out with a field pass to the afternoon practice last Tuesday with two of my good family friends and let me tell you, we had a BLAST! Thanks to Lehigh Gas and Pepsi our experience at Lehigh was one for the books. I drove up with my friends Carly and Jack Tuesday morning, but not at a gruesome 5:30am like most fans do coming from the Philly area. We had to pick up our tickets in Allentown at 9:30, so we missed the morning practice. Arriving at Lehigh University was a bit confusing, actually. Of course we were the only car driving into the campus and we had absolutely no idea where we were going. So, we drove through the campus and finally found some green arrows that we assumed were for us, the fans. So, here I am driving my new Ford Escape up the long and windy roads of Lehigh's gorgeous campus. I turned to Carly and Jack and said, "We would never make it up this mountain if we were in Barney." Barney is one of the cars my family has, which is a purple 1997 Toyota Corola that my brother has proudly took under his wings now that my younger sister and I ditched Barney and moved on to our Escape. So, we keep driving and driving and we weren't seeing anything. We decided to turn around and go back in case we missed something. As I am turning around and driving back, we see these green arrow signs again! At this point the three of us are laughing and starting to think we were being Punk'd (as if Ashton Kuther would pick three kids from Delaware County PA to Punk). Finally, we make it back down to the the main campus and no one wants to roll down their window to ask directions, so I frantically drive up to a nice student with a Lehigh t-shirt and ask him, "Where can we park for training camp?" This kid looks at us and knows we are lost and says, "Uh, isn't that up on the other side of campus?" Great, here we are, first time training camp visitors and we get an answer like that. He tells us to go back up the mountain and go over to Goodman Campus. Back up the mountain we go and finally make it there. Of course, we catch everyone heading back to their cars after the morning practice. Fortunately, we find an information tent and they tell us to go to the Pepsi tent and they will take care of us there, including lunch and field passes. Field passes??!! We knew something good had to come out of our trip all the way up here! So we arrive at the Pepsi tent, and know absolutely NOBODY. Granted there were about 20 people sitting at the large round tables waiting for lunch, but we still felt out of place. As soon as we get under the tent we see Jason Avant leaving the tent; apparently we missed the autograph session. Oh well, lunch was ready and we had four hours to kill before the next practice. Sitting at our table, just the three of us, we start looking around at people and see that everyone has field passes and we start to wonder when and where do we get ours. I spot a guy with at least 30 around his neck and Carly, Jack and I are fighting over who is going to ask him for them. We voted Carly since she was yet to ask anybody where we were going and what our tickets were good for. She claims she has a fear of talking to people or something, and here she is a junior at Villanova with a communication major. I wonder how she is going to make out in the real world. Anywho, all of a sudden people are getting up and returning their field passes. Then we start saying, "Oh no, what if they were only good for the morning practice, what do we do?" What did we do? We sat there for two and a half hours under the Pepsi tent until we were the last people in the tent.Yes, we did that. Jack had about three Pepsi Max sodas in that time frame and was getting a bit jittery. Then a different man from the one who had the field passes comes up to us and asks if we are staying for the afternoon and what do you know, he gives us three passes! FINALLY!
Fast forwarding to later that afternoon, we get onto the field for what we didn't know was special teams only. If you ask me, I really don't care if it is a regular practice or special teams, I got field passes and stood one foot away from one of the best football teams in the NFL. Not to mention some of the best looking players in the NFL. So, here I am, a blond, 5'3", 22 year-old girl with a Brent Celek jersey on. I turned to Jack and said, "Is this real life?" This was amazing. After about two minutes I work up the guts to say hello to Celek and what comes out?..."Hey Brent!!"... his response, an awkward, "Helloooo.." Oh well, at least he looked at me, right? My next goal was to get Jason Avant to pass me the football during his catch his Leonard Weaver. Again, here I am at Eagles Training Camp, staring at Avant and Weaver pass the ball to each other right in front of me. I stood there for five minutes just watching the ball go from Avant to Weaver, Avant to Weaver. In my head I'm practicing what to say, "Hey Jason! Over here, pass me the ball, I'll catch it!" That never happened. But, this did happen: As we were being escorted off the field by Eagles employees, I finally worked up the guts to say hello to my new favorite player, rookie WR Riley Cooper. Yes, the tall, gorgeous, long-haired number 14. I said,"Hey Coop" and waved. He turned, looked, saw me waving, smiled, waved and WINKED! A perfect ending to a perfect day. So, when people ask me about training camp I tell them it was great and that me and Cooper are dating now.
Go Birds!
