Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 10, 1994 TAG: 9412120051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Kate Wood doesn't look like a troublemaker, not with her "Football Mom" sweatshirt and her Suburban van stuffed full of stadium seats.
But mark my words, Kate Wood and her fellow Albion College fans are going to be causing trouble when the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl - the national championship for college football's smallest division - kicks off today in Salem.
Oh, it's not that they're especially rowdy. Loud, maybe, but who isn't at a big game like this?
The cops probably don't have to worry about her.
Here's the problem:
For the second year in a row, a week of baby-blue skies and shirt-sleeve temperatures has given way to howling fits of winter weather on game day. Fact is, fans at today's game probably are going to get drenched.
And you know what?
Kate Wood doesn't care.
We locals are the ones who have been busy belly-aching about the forecast, complaining that it's going to be hard to do our civic duty to plump up the attendance figures if we have to sit through a bone-chilling December rainstorm.
But Wood?
So what if it's going to rain? the Albion mom asked as she watched her team - well, actually her son, outside linebacker Jared Wood - practice on the Salem High School field Friday afternoon.
"This is a welcome sight for us," Wood said as the first clouds moved in. "We won't have to shovel snow off our seats."
Snow? Up in Michigan - that's where Albion is - football fans apparently are a pretty hardy breed, even in the obscurity of Division III, where when you talk about a "scholarship player," you're probably talking about how the offensive left tackle is up for a Fulbright.
"We have sat through worse," Wood said. "That's part of football, right?"
Well, maybe in Michigan it is. And, the way things are turning out, it's becoming part of Salem's Stagg Bowl tradition, too.
Here's a tip: Beware of tiny, obscure Midwestern schools where the football-crazy fans dress out in purple and laugh in the face of the elements.
Last year, it was Mount Union College in Ohio that brought 2,000 screaming fans, an astonishing number of whom stripped off their purple shirts to show their disdain for a wimpy wind-chill factor of 5 above zero.
This year, it's Albion College.
How big a deal is the Stagg Bowl back home? Well, the college president canceled classes Friday.
The town of Albion, Mich., plans to broadcast the game via loudspeakers to shoppers downtown, so they won't miss a single play. But that's assuming anyone's still there.
"The whole town of Albion is shut down," declared Joan Sampson, grandmother of quarterback Kyle Klein.
The first wave of Albion's purple-clad fans started rolling into the Roanoke Valley on Friday - just ahead of a storm that dumped 8 inches of snow back home, but is supposed to fizzle out into rain by the time it hits Virginia.
Fans made their ritual pilgrimage to the stadium, to ooh and aah the facilities - "This is a high school stadium?" they asked incredulously - and snap a few pictures.
Helen Beglin, grandmother of defensive end Jason Beglin, lined up her children and grandchildren in front of the Stagg Bowl sign at the stadium ticket office and took a family portrait.
Martin Heyboer Jr., father of center Martin Heyboer III, settled for a panorama of the tarp-covered field.
"I'm going to have to go buy some more film," he said. "I brought down five rolls and I'm on my third one now."
That's dedication.
Weren't these Michiganders happy to be in the sunny Southland?
Ha!
"We tried to bring some snow with us," said Joan Sampson's husband, Dick.
He was so confident of bad weather that he brought along a full supply of long underwear and thermal-insulated boots.
It's not that he remembered the snow squalls from watching last year's teeth-chattering Stagg Bowl on ESPN. It's just that, if you're an Albion fan, that's what you do to get ready for a game.
"Last year, when we played Mount Union," Wood said, "we had sleet, snow and rain. You can't have anything that bad. No matter what you had last year."
Not even sickness could deter Albion fans. Jean Schmidt - the mother of the Albion coach - has two other sons back home in bed with the flu. Out of motherly concern, she was going to tell them to stay put and watch the game on TV, right?
Wrong.
She was headed off to Hills Department Store on Friday afternoon to stock up on rain ponchos. The two sons are coming, flu or no flu.
"They want to see big brother do great things," Schmidt said.
Now don't take this the wrong way: It's not that fans from the other Stagg Bowl team - Pennsylvania's Washington & Jefferson College - are exactly faint of heart.
"This weather is mild compared to what we're used to," insisted Barron McCune, W&J Class of '35 and the chairman emeritus of the school's board of trustees.
It's just that W&J fans have a different way of showing their contempt for the weather.
So what if Albion fans were lined up at the team's practice, boasting about their bad-weather stories? The W&J fans were snuggled up by the fire in the Whispers lounge at the Airport Marriott, sampling the red punch that matched the team's colors - not to mention the occasional Scotch on the rocks.
"If you want to find W&J people," said W&J alum Charlie Powell, "look in the bar."
That's how they stay warm.
by CNB