I remember feeling weirdly alien with the word Duke across my chest as a freshman. I had stumbled upon some world I wasn’t made for, where people painted masterpieces on plastic coolers and put fried chicken on their waffles like that made any sense at all and said hello to me on the street without an ulterior motive. They even understood how basketball worked—like, fouls and everything—and came in knowing Miles from Mason from Marshall. It was all intimidatingly foreign.
I can tell you the exact moment Duke started making sense for me. On Feb. 8 2012, in the GA common room, I watched as Austin Rivers made a miraculous game-winning three against UNC at the buzzer. And suddenly people I barely knew were crying and hugging me and then I was on West and there were people climbing trees and we all stood there and chanted and waited for the bus to come back together. We cried as the players emerged and we basked in the glory of the moment and I followed Austin Rivers to his car, filming it all on my phone as if that were a totally normal thing to do to a stranger.
We were thrown together into something bigger than ourselves, and while at the time I didn’t fully understand what was happening, it was emotional and memorable and addictive. We were celebrating something we all had in common, an accomplishment by classmates who also wore the word Duke on their chests.
I think we’re onto something with this basketball thing. Nothing else can get everyone out of their common rooms and sections and off-campus houses and into a single space where every breath is taken in unison as we watch. We hurt if one of our players so much as trips—we’re insulted by bad calls. We gasp, sigh, jump, cry, and cheer together and by the time the game ends we’ve collectively been through so much that we feel inextricably connected to the outcome.
I personally didn’t do anything to impact our national championship game. But the players and I wear shirts with the same word on the front so I don’t say they did it—I get to say we did it.
You guys, we did it. And that “we” right there is my favorite thing.
Find me something that feels better than everyone, already together in Cameron, making their way onto the court for the final two minutes of the game in order to be closer together. Find me something more meaningful than going through the emotional rollercoaster of heartbreak and celebration of a championship game alongside a few thousand of your closest friends and classmates. Seniors, find me something more satisfying than hanging a fifth banner with our graduation year on it.
What makes our fandom of Duke basketball different from anything anywhere else is how those feelings then leak out of Cameron and spill into a myriad of other moments.
As much as we like to pretend we aren’t a cohesive student body, with the organizations we align ourselves with and parties with lists and creepy frat emails and who you mix with or block with or know, there are times when I look around and feel that same sense of togetherness permeating our campus. As we rallied together after a noose was found on campus. When we sit in silence at Me Too Monologues to absorb some of the pain of one our classmates. That unstoppable LDOC feeling of community. When it’s just so beautiful outside that everyone drops what they’re doing to bask in the gardens. It’s a special kind of we’ve-done-this-before togetherness where we look around thinking: let’s live as connected as we feel right now, forever.
That’s what a national championship does—it pulls us tighter. Tighter to Duke, to each other, to the legacy we’re leaving behind.
I’m very rarely the most emotional person in the room. I’m more of an empathetic crier—rarely the one to take the initiative to get the crying started but make eye contact with me with tears in your eyes and I’m done.
I’ve never met Quinn Cook-he doesn’t know who I am. But right now there’s a photo of him all over the Internet with his eyes welled up and well, just like that, it keeps happening to me too. Only here could I feel so connected to someone I don’t actually know.
I laid down on the grass on Monday night after the game and stared at the sky, hearing only sounds of celebration and seeing only a handful of stars. I felt everything and nothing and knew I didn’t have to say a word to the thousands of people celebrating around me to know they were on the same page.
Though neither Duke nor basketball made much sense to me as a freshman, it’s so very clutch that I now derive so much happiness from the overlap.
2015, we did it. Now let’s live the next month like we just won a national championship.
Elissa Levine is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Thursday.
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