Owen's First Basketball Game

Owen loves balls.  Any time he sees anything remotely spherical, he gets excited: "BALL?!"

He also seems relatively interested when I am watching basketball games on TV, so we decided to go to UW's final women's regular-season home game and see if he would enjoy it.

We thought Owen could roam freely around the top of the stands if he got bored, but we were surprised and worried to see that the arena was almost at capacity!  (We forgot that UW is actually really good this year, and that they would be honoring the seniors this game.)  We didn't know if Owen would make it through the whole game.

It was incredible: two hours of Owen being completely riveted by the game.  He didn't turn his attention from the game once until almost the very end.

We tried to preemptively give him fruit snacks to keep him happy throughout the game, but he held the first fruit snack we gave him in his had for the entire game without eating it.  Too exciting for snacks!

It was an amazing game to attend in person, but poor Owen got a little scared toward the end.  Our star player, Kelsey Plum, was on pace to break the all-time scoring record for college basketball before the end of the postseason.  Instead of waiting, however, she managed to score 57 points and break the record during the game!  As she got closer, the crowd went wild with every basket she scored.  It was exciting for us (I felt a fraction of what Jimmermania must have been like when I was away from BYU), but Owen was so startled every time the crowd erupted.

Despite the surprises, Owen loved the experience.  It was definitely a successful family event!