University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Off the Tee
2/9/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
Off the Tee
Day 1, February 8, 2003
On the verge of another great season, we quickly loaded the van for the ?Big Easy.? Our next stop was New Orleans where Tulane hosts their collegiate invitational at English Turn. Coming off a great fall, we are all excited about the spring season.
No better way to kick off the spring than by facing teams like Tennessee, Wake Forest, East Tennessee State, and South Carolina. All of which are ranked among the top-50 in the nation (according to Golfweek). Not to mention Tulane seemingly the rival of all of Southern Miss athletics.
Ben Snow, Justin Elliott, Shane Rushing, Mike Soroka, and I are in the van this week. The excitement kicks in as we cross Lake Ponchatrain, while visions of busted drives and holed putts venture through the minds of this featured five-some. Little did we know that our minds would go elsewhere once we reached the biggest party town in the world.
As we arrived at our hotel, we noticed it was right smack in the middle of town and about a 3-iron shot from Bourbon Street. Our hotel was much nicer than your everyday Motel 6, with a built in Pizza Hut and guys that bring your bags in for you. I think the word for them is ?concierge.?
Anyway, we were all sort of overwhelmed by it all especially when we got to our rooms and found a complimentary king cake and a much more appealing tee gift than we are accustomed to. The tee gift, usually a t-shirt or a divot tool, was a CD clock radio with ?Tulane Invitational 2003? inscribed on the top.
After we settled in and I finally figured out how to get online with all this new technology in the room, we decided to venture out and find a place to eat. What better place to look than Bourbon Street. We passed several places, where people were having a great time as they tend to do here in New Orleans. Finally, we found a place to eat a little cajun cuisine. I recommend the gumbo.
As we left the restaurant, we were easily distracted by the abundance of people walking around. Mike Soroka was a lot more distracted by that than the rest of us. We easily walked off the dinner we ate as we were walking back to our hotel.
As we made it back to the hotel we had to remind ourselves that we came here to play golf. So we made it back at the late hour of 8:30 p.m., which is not your normal ?call it a night? hour when you visit New Orleans. We had a few laughs when Ben Snow showed off his new t-shirt to all of us. So off to bed we went dreaming once again of how nice it would be to come home with the trophy.
