Daniel Frank, a A10Talk Staff Writer since 2016, has been a GW fan his entire life. He now plans to attend George Mason, GW’s Revolutionary Rival and another A-10 foe. Here’s his story:
I have been following George Washington basketball for as long as I can remember. Literally. I was born in September of 1999, and attended my first GW basketball game in November of the same year. This upcoming season (2017-18) will mark my 19th year as a season ticket holder, though I’ll be just 18 years old. I think you’re starting to get the picture. Over the years, I’d estimate I’ve seen over 500 GW basketball games at the Charles E. Smith Center, both men and women combined. If you count games I’ve watched on TV or listened to on the radio, well, you’re probably looking at closer to 700 or 800 games.
Even once I moved to Louisville, KY in the summer of 2015, I still managed to watch almost every game, thanks to RaiseHigh Live (GW’s online stream of their games) and the Atlantic 10’s various TV deals (ESPN, CBS & NBC). I even tried made it back about once a month to come to at least one men’s or women’s game each time I’d visit.
For a while, I thought that George Washington was the school I was going to end up attending once I graduated high school. I went and visited last summer, but ultimately, I didn’t fall in love with the campus like I’d expected too: I just wasn’t looking for a city school like GW. This, obviously, did not impact my love for GW basketball at all, as you’ve probably figured out by now, especially based on the amount of Colonial-related content I’ve written for A10Talk in the last year alone.
But here’s where the tables start to turn a bit: when I toured George Mason, I really liked the campus and the whole feel of the place. In the end, I didn’t even end up applying to GW, but instead to Mason and two other Virginia schools, which I was also accepted to. But when it came time to make my ultimate decision, I chose GMU over the other two schools.
This now brings me to my present identity crisis: what do I do about my Revolutionary Rivalry rooting interests? Don’t get me wrong, I am excited to become a George Mason Patriot, but how do I turn my back on the school that I have literally grown up with. It’s easy to follow both GW and Mason during the season and root for both simultaneously, except for the four times their men’s and women’s teams meet annually. Perhaps I’m being slightly overly dramatic, but hey, this off-season was getting a bit boring anyway! I may have a year to think this over, however, since I am considering taking a gap year due to the fact I’m on the younger side of my graduating class, and it has always been that way.
What this means for me as a writer, is that I will start covering both George Washington and George Mason for A10Talk, and will help run their respective A10Talk twitter accounts (A10Talk GW and A10Talk Mason). I will do my best to cover both teams as best as I can, and I look forward to exploring this new dimension to my love for the Atlantic 10 Conference. In the mean time, I’ve got some thinking to do!
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