Aiden’s return to Assembly Hall

Posted on March 6, 2014March 6, 2014 by Matt Todd

A few weeks ago, Aiden and I braved the cold and trekked down to Bloomington for the annual Solo & Ensemble Festival. His first performance was scheduled at 8-ish in the morning, which is an ungodly time for a Saturday morning. That meant we had to get up well before the sun in order to arrive in time for him to warm up and perform with his ensemble.

His solo was 15 minutes after his ensemble performance. Then we did what he had been looking forward to all along: We went to Assembly Hall. Last year, we “snuck” onto the football field. Not this time. Too chilly. But he had a memorable experience inside the hallowed Hall of hoops.

The women’s basketball team had a game that afternoon. So they were prepping the facility for the game. The smell of popcorn filled the air as we stepped onto the court. They already had the scoreboard fired up and ready to go.

It was pretty awesome. I think Aiden found it a bit awe-inspiring. I showed him where some recruits have been known to sit during their official on-campus visits. He sat down and said, “I want to sit here someday. As a recruit.”

Dude’s gonna have to get in some serious practicing in order for that to happen. But that’s not exactly a bad thing. And he’s not a stranger to the roundball.

http://instagram.com/p/iMBK6plw4E/

After getting his fill of Assembly Hall, there was one more place we needed to stop before heading home. It was time for lunch. So we had to stop at Nick’s. Because you can’t get much better than Nick’s. Except maybe game day at Nick’s. We each had the stromboli. And it was fabulous.

Aiden’s still not very happy with me for going to that basketball game without him back in November. I think this trip did help butter him up just a little bit. And who knows? After getting swept by Nebraska, it’s highly unlikely that the Hoosiers are going to make it into the NCAA tournament. Unless, of course, they have some type of miraculous run in the Big Ten tournament. And unless they only play ranked teams during this tournament, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll make a run. So there might still be a chance for him to go an IU home game this March. You could say that’s a small silver lining to the potential of maybe hosting postseason tournament game.

Maybe.

Oh – and the Solo & Ensemble Festival? Aiden got two gold medals.

Yup. He’s pretty talented. He gets his musicianship from me. Just don’t tell his momma. 😉

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Matt Todd

Howdy. I'm Matt. My wife, Christy, and I have four kids and two dogs, I'm passionate about orphan care. I'm a die-hard fan of the Evansville Aces, the Indiana Hoosiers, and Star Wars. I'm trying to live life by the Todd family motto: "It behooves us to live!"