Arch Madness!

Arch Madness!

Welcome back from spring break, Ramblers! This afternoon, about 60 Loyola students returned from St. Louis for Arch Madness this past weekend! I was lucky enough to attend this trip to support our men’s basketball team and to visit such a beautiful city. In this post, I will be talking about my experience attending Arch Madness in the beautiful city of St. Louis, Missouri!

Arch Madness is the basketball tournament held in St. Louis, Missouri every year to see which teams will advance to further tournaments. Loyola offered two student packs, one for $40 that included 2 dinners, a Rambler scarf, a commemorative T-shirt, and tickets to the games, and another package for $50 that included everything pre-listed plus transportation to and from St. Louis. I purchased the $50 pack, and paired with a cheap hotel price, ended up paying a wonderful price for such a great trip!

I have never been west of Chicago, and have never crossed the Mississippi River before. When I first heard about the trip to St. Louis for Arch Madness, I was really excited to go! All of my friends wanted to go too; it would be a fun thing for us all to do over spring break! When last Thursday finally rolled around, we all boarded the buses and departed Loyola ready to cheer the Ramblers on!
After the crazy 6 hour-long bus ride, we finally arrived in St. Louis. The next day, game day, was extremely long for us! We wanted to see and do as many things in St. Louis as we could within the small amount of time we had. We had complementary tickets to the St. Louis City Museum, which was basically a giant playground for kids and adults alike! We spent the whole morning climbing and crawling through tunnels and sliding down slides both indoors and outdoors! It was great to feel like a child again. I truly can’t remember the last time I yelled, “there’s a line for the slide!” This place was definitely worth visiting, and I’d love to go back sometime!

Later that day, we visited the legendary Gateway Arch. I absolutely loved viewing the arch from the ground, and was so excited to view the ground from the top of the arch! We bought our tickets from the Old Courthouse (which an extremely historic place all in itself! This courthouse held the Dred Scott case and many others, and was visited by many famous historic people such as Alexander Hamilton!) and headed over to the elevators! The elevators to reach the top of the arch are extremely tiny! They seat five people, are round in shape, and are really low! Definitely not something for people with claustrophobia! Once we reached the top though, the view was breathtaking and definitely worth the scary trip up! We viewed down over St. Louis and the Mississippi River from 630 feet up! It was an amazing experience!

Later that day, we began preparations for the big game! There was a huge pep rally in the hotel we were staying at, and with the band playing and cheerleaders cheering we welcomed the team and sent them off to win! Once at the game, the stands were a sea of maroon and gold! Everyone knew that the Ramblers were there to win! We cheered harder than we have ever cheered before, and it led to a victory against Indiana State University! That meant the Ramblers were staying another day to take on the University of Northern Iowa on Saturday afternoon! That game we unfortunately ended up losing, but the Ramblers played a good and hard game, and we never let our pride down!

Upon returning, I am able to look back at this amazing trip with great memories and happiness. I had a wonderful time touring St. Louis with my friends, and an even greater time cheering the team on with all of my fellow Ramblers in our legendary Gryffindor-looking Loyola scarves! Our presence was definitely felt in that city, and we will be remembered! It was truly a great weekend to be a Rambler. Onward LU!

IMG_6465

Comments are closed.