Category: State College

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State College Spikes – Season 2

The State College Spikes are a short season Class A baseball team – short season meaning they don’t start play until the end of June. Major League Clubs support short season teams so they have a place to stock the players whom they sign through their draft which takes place after high school and college regular seasons are complete.

Today is that draft day. It will begin at 2PM and the first few rounds will be televised for the first time (ESPN2 is carry the draft).

Since I have time on my hands, I’ve thrown together a website to track the Pittsburgh Pirates draft choices (the Pirates are the major league affiliate for the Spikes team) because the Spikes roster will be primarily populated with kids from this draft. This provide a way for friends of mine, who actually have jobs and have to work, to actually follow the draft today and get a feel for who might be playing for the Spikes this year.

I seeded the site yesterday with those Pirate players whom minor league baseball currently lists as being owned by the Pirates but not yet playing with a Pirate minor league team (they are primarily holdovers from last years short season team who didn’t get promoted to a higher level team this year – some of them will be cut before the short season play starts June 20th). During the course of the draft today I will be updating the site in real time as the Pirates make their picks.

Here’s the link to the site.

And here’s an RSS feed that will be updated as each pick is made.

FOLLOW-UP:  While the blog turned out pretty good for a quick and dirty deal, I ran into some Blogger issues (WordPress has spoiled me) when I tried to put some bells on whistles on the blog.   So I’ve converted the blog to WordPress and here’s the link to the current version.

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Where are they now?

Just in case they didn’t know it, I thought I’d update Ken and Gary on the whereabouts of a couple of old friends of theirs from our Chalfont days.

Conti's Cross Keys Inn

I’m sure most of us second generation Falls remember Conti’s Cross Keys Inn in Doylestown. I had my high school graduation dinner there with the family shortly after the graduation ceremony and shortly before I rear ended a car on 611 on my way to a party – which not surprisingly I never made.

Walt Conti

Walt Conti, was the proprietor of the Inn, and I got to know Walt later through my association with the Tavern Restaurant in State College. Walt was one of the original Tavern waiters hired while he was a student at Penn State in the late 40s early 50s. Walt maintained close contacts with the original Tavern owners and even helped train the first Tavern bartenders when State College finally allowed liquor sales in the late 60s (people used to have to drive 10 miles to Bellefonte to buy a drink or a bottle of booze).

Walt was quite successful in the restaurant business rising to head the prestigious National Restaurant Association. He was remained connected with Penn State serving as a long time Board of Trustees member and even chairing the Board for several years. Walt is now retired and living in South Carolina. However, Walt isn’t the reason that I’m making this post. His two sons, Joe and Mike, are.

Joe Conti

Joe Conti was good friends with Ken in high school. Ken can provide more details but my understanding was that at one time Joe and Ken had talked about going to Penn State, majoring in Hotel and Restaurant Administration, then opening a restaurant together. As it turns out, when the family made the move to Illinois following Ken’s senior year in high school, he decided to stay closer to home and enrolled in Illinois State instead.

Joe continued the family tradition and enrolled at Penn State. He also followed in his fathers footsteps by working at the Tavern Restaurant where I got to now him. Joe eventually took over management of the Cross Keys Inn from Walt. But like his Dad, Joe wasn’t content to just run the family business. Joe got involved in politics eventually getting elected as a State Senator from Bucks County. The demands of his new political career forced Joe to sell the two family restaurants – the Cross Keys Inn and the Pipersville Inn – in 1999.

In 2006, as is wont in politics, Joe got caught up in a political football (state legislators voted themselves a 2005 midnight pay raise that became to be known as a greedy money grab by the public – Joe made an ill fated joke about the pay raise that came back to haunt him and he fell out of favor with the Bucks County Republicans). Joe elected to retire from the Senate rather than fight what appeared to be a losing battle (even if he had won the fight against his fellow Bucks County Republicans he might have lost the war when many Republicans were swept out of office by the Democrats in the 2006 election).

Don’t worry about Joe though. He landed on his feet with a nice appointment as the head of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board aka the LCB. Pennsylvania maintains an archaic system (maybe even more so than Utah) where all liquors sales are controlled by the state. You can’t buy a bottle of booze in this state anywhere other than one of the 600+ State Stores scattered around the state. So Joe is now effectively the manager of those 600+ stores that bring in a staggering $1.6 billion in sales. Nice gig Joe. Oh yes, also like his father, Joe served on Penn State’s Board of Trustees.

Mike Conti

That brings us to Mike Conti. Mike and Gary were friends in junior high school. Mike followed in his brother and fathers footsteps by also going to Penn State, working at the Tavern where I got to know him, and also becoming a friend of mine (I even went to Mike’s wedding in 1978).

After graduation, Mike went to work for his dad at the family inn back in Doylestown. However, like many of us, Mike couldn’t get Penn State out of his blood. In 1992 he returned to work for the University as part of the University’s Hospitality Services. Hospitality Services runs Penn State’s two on property hotels, the Nittany Lion Inn and the Penn Stater Conference Center.

Mike started out as the Food and Beverage Manager for the restaurant at the Nittany Lion Inn. Today he is the General Manager of the entire hotel. The Nittany Lion Inn has been an on campus fixture since it was built in 1929. It features 220+ rooms and is the place to stay to for alumni returning for campus visits. During it’s 75 year history, many notables, including numerous presidents, politicians such as Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King, actors like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, and entertainers as varied as Billy Joel and Brittany Spears, have been guests at the hotel.

The Nittany Lion Inn

My hat’s off to the Conti’s – one of Penn State’s most highly regarded families.

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A real hero’s story

A friend of mine, Matt Emmerling, was just honored by the Carnegie Foundation’s Hero Fund. Honorees receive the Carnegie Medal



and a financial grant ($5000 in Matt’s case).

The award was established in 1904 by Pittsburgh Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. His deed commissioning the establishment of the fund noted:

We live in a heroic age. Not seldom are we thrilled by deeds of heroism where men or women are injured or lose their lives in attempting to preserve or rescue their fellows.

Matt’s story, as told in last week’s press release announcing this year’s award winners.

Matthew J. Emmerling and Kevin J. Mahoney saved Seth L. Mattleman and others from burning, State College, Pennsylvania, April 2, 2006. Mattleman, 20, was asleep in the 2.5-story house he shared with other university students, some of whom were also inside the building. Fire broke out before dawn on the back porch of the house and, spreading rapidly, entered the structure, including into Mattleman’s first-floor bedroom. Emmerling, 21, university student, was nearby when he saw the fire. He and Mahoney, 22, lifeguard, who was walking nearby, responded to the front of the house, where they entered through the front door, shouting to alert any occupants. Two of the residents fled the building. Although dense smoke limited their visibility, the men entered Mattleman’s room and shouted for him to leave, but Mattleman was disoriented. Emmerling grasped him about the arms and pulled him to the front door and outside, Mahoney following. Emmerling and Mahoney then re-entered the house, through a side entrance, and went upstairs, where they evacuated the second floor of at least one occupant. Finding a disoriented man in a bathroom on that floor, Mahoney pulled him by the arms to the stairs, and they stumbled partway down before exiting the house along with Emmerling. Flames soon engulfed the interior of the structure and destroyed it. Mattleman suffered burns and was treated at the scene. He recovered. Emmerling suffered smoke inhalation, for which he sought medical attention the following day, and Mahoney sustained a minor ankle burn. They too recovered.

The actual incident took place a year ago and was written up in a couple of local newspapers including the Penn State student newspaper, the Daily Collegian, where Matt works.

Here are some of them:

The Penn State Daily Collegian on the original incident:
After seeing smoke coming from the back of a house at 700 West College Ave., Emmerling ran into the burning building and was able to fight off the heavy smoke to wake the sleeping residents and, with Mahoney’s help, get everyone to safety before flames engulfed the house.

The Centre Daily Times on the Carnegie Hero Award:
Matt Emmerling, 22, and Kevin Mahoney, 23, didn’t even know each other when they spotted a fire about 4:30 a.m. April 2, 2006, at 700 W. College Ave.

They just happened to be nearby.

Together, they dashed inside and helped wake the eight college students sleeping there. The house ended up being a total loss, but no one was seriously hurt.


The Daily Collegian on a fund raiser to help the kids in the house:
For Brian McHale, this week has been hectic, to say the least. But the fire that brought his house down could not bring his spirits down, especially not last night.

“Without those two heroes, there wouldn’t be a celebration tonight at all,” McHale (senior-supply chain management) said.

Those two heroes are Matt Emmerling and Kevin Mahoney, who saved the lives of several of the students whose house burned down in a fire last weekend.

Photo of Matt with the mother of one of the kids he saved:

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Capping my THON coverage

With various stories about the event.

Hazleton Standard Speaker:: Dance of Love: Nittany Lion football players help make THON memorable for local youngster

A dozen kids and their families get a personal tour of the Penn State football facilities.

The Daily Collegian: Players grant wishes

Another article on the tours hosted by the football players.

Centre Daily Times: Cancer benefit kickoff, impact larger than life

More than 2000 students prep the Jordan Center for THON. A mother of one of the young cancer patients is quoted as saying – “When they’re with those Penn State students,” Sharon Otstott said, “you see these kids (become) normal kids again.”

CentreDaily.com: Students raise $5.2 million at Thon

Crowd estimated as 10,000 to 12,000 for Sunday’s afternoon wrapup.

The Daily Collegian: Thon breaks record by $1 million.

Tavern employee quoted in the article – Independent dancer Jen Shaffer (senior- kinesiology) wore an orange cape during Thon, which her moraler gave her so she’d be easy to spot on the crowded floor. “My moraler made it for me, and in her first shift, gave it to me as a surprise,” she said.

The Daily Collegian: Families enjoy each others’ company at Thon breakfast

On Sunday morning, organizers host a breakfast for all the families in attendance who have a child that has been helped by the Four Diamonds Fund. From the article – Catharine Scott, whose daughter Colleen was diagnosed with cancer when she was only 5, said without the Four Diamonds Fund, paying for Colleen’s treatment “probably would have bankrupted us.

The Daily Collegian: Former Thon kid relives her experience

As a teenager, Kern had the most common type of bone cancer among children, osteogenic sarcoma, in her right knee. She was a Four Diamonds child in 1992 and is now cancer-free. Still, someone from her family has returned to Thon each year for the past 15 years.

The Daily Collegian: Thon supporters trek 135 miles for the kids.

Runners brave brutal conditions to relay a backpack of letters from kids in the Four Diamonds Children’s Ward at Hershey Medical Center 135 miles to deliver them to dancers at the Dance Marathon. This was the first time they did this run and it worked so well that it’s apt to become an annual tradition now.

The Daily Collegian: Mail call delights, energizes dancers.


Mike “The Mailman” Herr danced around the Thon stage as members of the crowd cheered him on, creating a buzz that flooded through the Bryce Jordan Center early Saturday morning.

“You’ve got mail!” he screamed. “Lots of mail!” he added, eliciting cheers and whoops from the tired crowd at this weekend’s Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon.

Left: Dancer Kerri O’Rourke reads a letter she received during mail call.

StateCollege.com: Familes share experience, find support at Thon.

Article talks about three families and their battles with childhood cancer. One family talks about a special day the Four Diamond Fund hosts for siblings of cancer patients, oft times forgotten victims as the disease hits a family.

The Daily Collegian: Family Hour evokes emotion from all.

At 1PM on Sunday, families of the cancer victims and survivors take the stage to share their stories with the dancers. It is annually the most emotional moment of the event and serves to remind everyone why they are there.


The Daily Collegian: Athletes add excitement

Bears kicker Robbie Gould: “It’s awesome,” said former Nittany Lions kicker and current Chicago Bear Robbie Gould, who signed autographs and took pictures with the kids. “As an alum, this is important to me … it’s the reason you’re here, and it’s the reason you come back.”

The Daily Collegian: Kids work it on the stage

Thon children “worked it” Saturday morning as they strutted, tossed their hair and were treated like celebrities during the kids’ fashion show. The children wore brand new clothes that were donated to the Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon by local merchants. Each child was allowed to keep the outfit he or she modeled.

FTK

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$5,240,385.17

Just got back from THON – the Penn State Dance Marathon charity and they hit a new record topping $5 million for the first time.

Julie Myers, who is quoted in the attached article, is a Tavern employee and the daughter of a Sonny Myers, friend of mine that worked with me at the Tavern in the 70s. Julie was one of five Tavern employees who danced in the event. Others were Lisa Scarborough, daughter of John “Doc” Scarborough, also a former Tavern waiter, friend, and onetime roommate of mine (1967-68 academic year); David Gray, Penn State soccer player, and son of Gary Gray whom I have mentioned on this blog several time; Jen Shaffer, a Facebook buddy of mine; and a fifth employee whom I don’t know.

I stopped in at THON at 2:30 AM last night to see the kids and I thought they were all doing remarkably well. For being the middle of the night they had quite a crowd there cheering the dancers on.

But that crowd paled when compared to the scene this afternoon. There had been some criticism about moving THON out of our cozy gym called Rec Hall. Over the last few years they had to stop letting people into Rec Hall on several occasions because it was filled to capacity (probably about 5000 or so). As a result, the event was moved to the Bryce Jordan Center with a capacity of about 16,000. There was a fear that the size of the Jordan Center would cause the event to lose it’s intimacy and everyone would seem lost in the arena. Those fears were unfounded as the BJC was pretty much packed and the event was hugely uplifting as usual.

Here’s a photo I took from the upper deck and you can see how the place was crammed with people.

The kids on the floor had been going for 44+ hours at this point. The kids in the stands are the spectators and various sponsoring sororities, fraternities, and other groups who have dancers on the floor. Typically the groups will have T-shirts made up to match their dancer(s) which is why the whole scene is so colorful. Here are two shots I took from opposite sides of the arena.


“JR and Natalie Band” were the last band to take the stage for the event. They went on at 2PM this afternoon. Here’s Nat acknowledging her biggest fan before she takes the stage.

In this one, taken from the back of the arena, if you look on the screens behind the band you can see one of the kids who decided to climb up on stage and dance with Natalie. He stayed up there most of the set and the crowd loved it. Mark, the lead guitarist, even had the kid strumming his guitar during one of the songs. The kid was having an absolute blast.

And here’s Ernest Hemingway with the rock star after her set was over.

Here’s a short video that I took from backstage with my photo camera showing the kids rocking to the band. I just wish I had some audio to go with it but it is an obsolete photo camera that’s considerably old technology – you know 4-5 years old.

One final thing that I want to show is another short video with my photo camera. This time the video starts out with the morale leaders on stage leading the dancers in the line dance that they do every hour. It then scans out over the actual dancers and the crowd and you can see how enthusiastic and pumped everyone is even though they are 46 hours into the marathon.

It’s quite an event and there’s really nothing even close to it when it comes to student fund raising. The kids can be immensely proud of themselves.

Many more stories if you are interested.

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THON 2007

Tomorrow features one of the big Penn State tradition – Dance Marathon Weekend – aka THON. THON is the largest student run charity event in the world and has been going on at Penn State for over thirty years. This weekend several hundred students will participate in a two day long dance marathon to raise money for the Four Diamonds Fund. Monies raised for the Four Diamonds Fund go to fight childhood cancer. The fund picks up the medical bills not covered by insurance for all children who are treated for cancer at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center. No child treated for cancer at Hershey ever gets a bill.

The actual dance event is actually just the culmination of months of work that thousands of PSU students have put into the fund raising. Planning for next years THON will start immediately after the conclusion of this year’s event. The logistics of pulling this thing off are incredible. There may be a couple of hundred kids dancing but there are thousands who participate in one way or another. Each dancer will have a support crew that numbers in the dozens and will work in shifts to help the dancers make it through the weekend.

Hundreds of others have spent months spearheading the actual collection of monies through all sorts of sponsorships and auxiliary events such as charity auctions (want to buy a raffle ticket on a Joe Paterno autographed Penn State Chopper? – go here), or canning events up and down the East Coast. Last year THON raised over $4M for the Four Diamonds Fund.

Others work hard on generating nationwide publicity for the event and more importantly raising awareness of childhood cancer issues. If you turn on your favorite network morning news program tomorrow you will undoubtedly see a segment devoted to THON.

Everyone that I know who has participated in this event has told me it’s been a life changing moment for them (and no I am not exaggerating). The emotional connection that the students make with the kids that they are helping is impossible to put into words, particularly by someone like me who is quite inept with them.

To get a flavor for the event, watch this video of a past segment from a few years ago on CBS Window on America.

Here’s a short video shot from the bleachers at the Recreation Hall gymnasium in 2005. Rec Hall is a 6000 seat gym that is ordinarily home to the volleyball, wrestling, and gymnastics teams. The dancers are all down on the gym floor while the crowd packs the bleachers cheering them on. You can see how packed the gym is. The event has gotten so big that this year they are moving it to the 16,000 seat Bryce Jordan Center to help accommodate spectators who had to be turned away in past years.

One of the things that keeps the dancers going over the course of the weekend is the once an hour line dance that they do. Each year a new unique line dance is created. It’s set to a pop music track but the lyrics all summarize worldwide, national, and local events that have taken place over the previous year. I know people who danced in the marathon 10-15 years ago but they can repeat their dance and lyrics at the drop of a hat. Here’s a video that captures the line dance from 2006.

Here’s another promotional video set to the music from Gladiator. Two things stand out in this one. One you get to see lots of the young kids who have been helped by the charity. The event and the dance floor are open to all former and current patients at the children’s center at Hershey. For some of them, THON has become a yearly event that they look forward to like a vacation. Another thing that you get fleeting glimpses of in this video are various Penn State athletic teams. Each team traditionally puts together a short skit/dance of their own and team members get on stage to dance for the dancers. The idea is to break up the monotony that the dancers are going through with hourly activities. Something different happens at the top of every hour and the dancers are always looking forward to the next hour.

One of the more moving THON moments happens during mail call which is at 3:30 AM Sunday morning. The dancers are all identified months in advance. It’s an incredible honor to be able to actually dance in the event and it’s not something that you can just walk in and sign up for. Each dancer is comes from a sponsoring organization either on campus or around town and the competition for the honor of dancing is enormous. Because the dancers are all well identified there’s plenty of time for the dance marathon committee to contact friends and family of the dancers to solicit cards and letter in support of the dancers efforts. In the middle of their second night on their feet the kids are really dragging. At that point, “Mike the Mailman”, a local on campus legendary figure, brings in literally thousands of letters for the dancers (each dancer will get 100+ letters. For the last few years, Mike has been accompanied by “Mr McFeeley” the postman on Mr Rogers Neighborhood. Interspersed with the letters from each dancer’s friends and families are letters from many of the kids who have survived their cancer bouts with help from the Four Diamonds Fund. Most of the kids letters are specifically addressed to a dancer but some are pulled out and read on stage to all of participants. Many of them are incredibly touching and when they are read there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

For more info, check out THON’s Wikipedia entry.

Probably the best way to wrap up this post is to link to this year’s promotional video. And I’ll end it by signing off the way that all THON correspondance is typically concluded as a reminder that this is all being done “For The Kids”.

FTK

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Thank You Shannon

Friday afternoon, I was down at Tony’s Big Easy for their annual customer appreciation holiday party, when the owner, Tony Sapia, called me aside. He had an envelope in his hand and told me the following story.

He said

I got a phone call the other day and this girl asked me “Do you know Uncle Larry?” My response was “Sure, everybody knows Uncle Larry”. Her answer was “Well I’m his niece”. My answer to her was “Sure” and she replied “No really. My name is Shannon and I’m his REAL niece.”.

With that Tony handed me an envelope with a gift certificate in it and said “Merry Christmas from Shannon”.

So thank you very much Shannon and Merry Christmas in return.

I hope to hear from others what they received in the Secret Santa exchange.

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Santa Crawl 2006

We had our third annual State College Santa Crawl last Friday. I was so busy trying to keep the group organized that I didn’t get my normal quantity of photos so I had to wait a few days to collect photos from others on the tour before making this post.

We started at out normal spot – Hooters. Hooters is located on the east end of the College Avenue, the main drag in State College. For those who haven’t been to town College Ave is actually the divider between the town on the south side of the street and the University which is on the north side of the street. Most of the downtown bars are located on or between College Ave and Beaver Ave which runs parallel to College. We traditionally start at Hooters and “crawl” our way westward ending the evening at Cafe 210.

This map should give you an idea.

The bars that we hit on our route and their block number on the map are as follows:

Hooters – block #12
The Lions Den – block #9
Gingerbread Man aka G-Man – block #24
Adam’s Apple at the Tavern – block #5
Shandygaff – block #5
Bill Pickle’s – block #3
Allen Street Grill – block #3
Cafe 210 – block #2

Here’s a photo taken at Hooters as we started

and here’s one of the group onstage at the Cafe at 2:00 am.

I was particularly proud of how many managed to make it to the end. I usually lose control of the group as we cross Pugh Street (that would be between the Shandygaff and Bill Pickle’s) as people decide to branch off to other bars not on the planned itinerary.

We probably had upwards of 35 people participate at one time or another and seven people actually made it all the way through.

To see more photos of our crawl, try this link.

To see photos from past crawls, try the links at this page.

To see photos from SantaCon events worldwide, try this link or this link.

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Not quite a zombie but close…

Since I still haven’t been resurrected by the PSU Alumni Association, I thought I’d get some life out of it. My original idea was to be a zombie but I couldn’t find any costume that I really liked. Then I stumbled across this one:

Here’s one of those freaky strange moments that happen every now and then (really odd that it should happen on Halloween). When I stopped into the Tavern, Pat told me that he had just come from listening to Natalie Berrena sing at the Allen Street Grill (on Tuesday’s she sings at the Grill in a duet separate from her bands – actually I should say bands since she’s singing in two of them). Pat described Natalie’s costume (see photo below) as “a cowgirl riding a horse”. I decided to head up to hear a couple of songs and on the way thought that I’d walk in and jokingly ask her to sing “Wild Horses” by the Stones. I didn’t even know if it was in their repertoire but thought it would be funny anyway. Sure enough, when I walk in, she’s singing it. Downright eerie….

Here’s Nat and her Tuesday night singing partner, Ted McCloskey.

For more of my Halloween photos, check out my Flickr account.

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One for the Other Thumb

You may remember this post titled “One for the Thumb” from a year ago (yes it’s hard to believe but the blog has been going for over a year now – I should have put up a first anniversary post but I missed it).

Last night was the 10th Annual Mondo Martini Madness event at Tony’s Big Easy in State College. Originally, I had not planned on entering (I was going to judge instead) but last week my competitive juices got flowing and I signed up again.

Rather than just whipping up any old drink, I’m always looking for some inspiration (it helps to have a story about the cocktail to tell the judges as I’m whipping it up). This year I wanted to find a way to dedicate my drink to the Penn State students who have been incredibly supportive of the football team over the last couple of years. Kirk Herbsteit called them “the best student section in the country” during the Ohio State game last year.

If you’ve watched any of the Penn State games recently you’ve no doubt seen the kids bouncing around to a techno song whenever there is a big defensive play. The song is often mistakenly referred to as “Zombie Nation” (the real name of the song is Kernkraft 400 and the artist’s is Zombie Nation, sort of,… the actual artist is a German DJ named Florian Senftner aka Spank! who books himself as Zombie Nation) – for more on Penn State’s love fest with the song read this Pgh Post Gazette article).

The Zombie theme became the start of my inspiration. There is a drink called a Zombie that was invented by Don the Beachcomber many years ago. The original recipe is a secret and there are many variations out there but one of the more popular uses Apricot Brandy along with three types of rum and various fruit juices.

When I saw Apricot Brandy in the recipe, it got me thinking. One of the things that Joe Paterno is known for is Peachy Paterno ice cream, one of the more popular flavors put out by the world reknown Penn State Creamery (little known factoid – Ben and Jerry ice cream got it’s start when the founders took a correspondence course from Penn State on ice cream making).

Bingo. I now had a unique name for my drink, i.e. “The Zombie Joe” and it would be peach flavored. However, I didn’t think that just a simple variation like changing the brandy from apricot to peach would be original enough to impress the judges so I went after a more radical approach.

The next step was to find out what peach liquors that Tony’s had on stock at his bar. He didn’t have peach brandy nor did he have creme de peche two typical peach liquors. What he did have was peach schnapps and peach vodka. Also, Southern Comfort is considered by many to be a peach flavored liquor (the reality is that peach is only one of many flavors in Southern Comforts secret recipe). Those liquors became the basis for my drink experimentation.

I had one other idea that I wanted to incorporate. Another unique thing that has stood out about our student section the last couple of years has been their commitment to having a “White Out” for big games. They will dress in white, wear white to whatever it takes to make the student section all white for the game. Well white fits in perfectly with my Zombie theme. Check these PSU students out in a shot from the Michigan game – they are some definite Zombie looking fans. That meant my Zombie drink had to be white and just to be sure the judges got the connection with the students, I renamed the drink “The Zombie Joe aka The White Out”.

After much experimentation with the three liquors and various whitening agents, Godiva White Liqour, White Coconut Rum, and Half and Half, I eventually settled on a drink that had equal parts of Peach Schnapps, Peach Vodka, Southern Comfort, and Half and Half. The drink is well shaken and served in a chilled martini glass. As the final piece de resistance I float two dark Necco wafers in the drink to look like Zombie eyes staring back at you as you drink it.

Once again, the judges liked my work and I walked away with my sixth title in the last seven years (I am undefeated only having my string broken when I sat out a year).

For more photos from the event, check out this link.