Euro Football Speech
Tour Stop III
The Claremont Colleges are a consortium of five undergraduate colleges and two graduate universities all housed together on a 350 acre parcel of land about 90 miles south of our home in Camarillo. There are about 6,300 undergaduate students enrolled in the consortium.
They even have "Ivy Covered Walls"
Even though these are officially seven separate institutions, through the consortium they share library systems, athletic facilities and extra-curricular activities. They also have joint academic programs and cross registration in over 2,500 courses that the institutions offer.
Athletically, the Claremont Colleges compete in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference but they do so as two separate entities.
Pomona College, student body 1520 and founded in 1887, joins with Pitzer College, founded in 1963 with 929 students, to form the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens in SCIAC competition.
Today I would be a guest of Head Coach Rick Candaele and speak to several of the Seniors of the Claremont Colleges' Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags which is also a member of the SCIAC.
For football, Pomona-Pitzer and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) each have a stadium located on the same street only about two blocks apart.
Founded in 1946
1,211 Coed Students
Founded in 1955
738 Coed Students
Founded in 1926
898 Women Students
I imagine that there is not a lot of help on the Scripps campus for Coach Candaele's Stags football team.
The Stags
That's Coach Candaele, third from the right, with some of the Stags who stopped by to hear about what it takes to play in Europe.
A third straight GREAT day getting to meet with enthusiastic young men who are passionate about the great game of American football and are very interested in taking their game overseas.
With colleges getting ready to break for the holidays, I probably won't get a chance to visit with any more Seniors until sometime in January. So far I have visited three colleges, only 11 to go to meet my original goal of talking at all 14 colleges that have football programs in southern California.
Finished speaking, I found myself hungry yet again!
La Paloma Restaurant
2975 Foothill Blvd.
La Verne, CA 91750
When I mentioned that I was going to talk today at CMS to our friend Debi Murphy, who grew up in nearby La Verne, she raved about La Paloma as THE in place to eat in the area. Who was I to argue, she is a Bonita H.S. Bearcat alum afterall!
But what to order. . .
The Kitchen Sink Burrito
"A HUGE BURRITO WITH BEANS, RICE, BEEF, PORK AND CHEESE. SMOTHERED WITH RANCHERO SAUCE AND TOPPED WITH AVOCADO SLICES. SOUR CREAM AND GUACAMOLE ON THE SIDE. $12.50"
This is what the menu boldly offered and what caught my eye instantly.
When they brought it out I couldn't help but think of Adam Richman's "Man v. Food" TV show on the Travel Channel. This was indeed a "HUGE BURRITO"!
Would I be worthy of this challenge? I dug in and found it to be delicious! Great, great pork in nearly every forkful of spicy Mexican cuisine!
I was about half way through the potential ordeal when I realized that I was sweating profusely from every pore in my body above my Adam's apple! Could I finish the Kitchen Sink before dehydration set in?
As always I was armed with my trusty Diet Coke to douse the flames and then, as if on cue, Debi Murphy called me on my cell phone to see if I had found La Paloma. We talked for about five minutes which allowed my intestinal tract to be downgraded to mere "Smoldering Ember" status.
The last half of this fine burrito was a beeze and so today, in La Verne, California. . .
MAN CONQUERED FOOD!!!
1 comment:
Hey George,
I bet it was fun conquering the Kitchen Sink burrito. That looks like my kind of place. My jeans are feeling a little tighter today as we just returned from Vegas. Going around to the colleges and speaking about European football is a great idea and opportunity to share this experience with so many others.
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