Aug 24, 2018: the crowd’s passion was as strong as the rain. The harder it poured, the more they roared. Students, parents and faculty filled the stands dressed in their best Hawaiian luau gear. It could be said that the crowd liked pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.

While the fans were one thing that the Berkeley Buccaneers could count on, the weather was not. At 7:00 pm, rain was already dampening the field. However, it fueled competitive spirit within the football players and before the second half, the Bucs had scored a touchdown, making the score 7-0.

The month of August averaged 8.2 inches of rainfall. That Friday night was no exception.

“I’m telling you, for 30 minutes, I’ve never been in rain that hard,” said Bobby Reinhart, “and for that long. It was actually fortunate that we finally got a lightning warning that drove us in. It wasn’t the rain that drove us in. Their field had started to bubble — they have an artificial surface field — because the water was coming down so fast it couldn’t drain, so it started to come back up. That was unsafe. Part of their [CCC’s] end zone was starting to flood. Ultimately that’s what caused the postponement: the state of their field. Not the rain or the lightning.”

After the players were removed from the field, fans from both sides of the competition found shelter in CCC’s gym. Water rushed in from the doors and the puddling only intensified as fans dripped. There was a thin layer of water beneath everybody’s shoes. Despite the cold air conditioning of the gym and uncomfortable dampness of students and faculty alike, a circle began to form in the center of the gym. Berkeley students cranked up their speaker and music rang out over the crowd. Cheerleaders and fans shouted at the opposite team in a friendly competition of spirit. As this heightened, dance battles broke out between schools. The peak moment was when the cheer coaches went head to head, Berkeley ultimately victorious.

Friday night, on and off of the field, Berkeley was a winner and the game was rescheduled.

“We were in a meeting, both football coaches, both AD’s when the officials, Friday night, determined it wasn’t safe to resume and made the call to postpone until Saturday at 6,” explained Reinhart. Unfortunately, the next day, the Buc’s good luck did not persist. “As bad luck would have it, we happened to come across some bad weather,”

The game was set to commence at 6:00 p.m. back at CCC’s campus. By 5:30, not only was the rain pouring, but excessive lighting threatened the area. The cheerleaders remained on their bus, the football players remained in the locker room and the fans remained in their cars for about an hour until people were moved into the gym. Coaches were in contact with one another discussing how the game would get to be played. It was decided that they would keep postponing play for 30 minutes after every lightning strike as called for by CCC’s lightning alert system. CCC does not have the THOR system that Berkeley has.

Once again, a lively fandom was constructing itself in CCC’s gym. People milled about, mingled with students from the other school, played volleyball and listened to music. Anticipation built for the game to start. However, every time that the doors opened, lighting warned the fans to return to the safety of the gym. There was no knowledge of when the rain might let up so that the football game may continue.

“It took two hours and 45 min to resume, and we finally started at 8:45. That’s one of the reasons we had bumped the time up to 6:00 instead of resuming at 7:00, just in case we had delays… In an ideal world, we would have rescheduled for Saturday morning but there was an SAT that morning,” said Reinhart.

The moment that the all clear was announced, fans poured from the gym and took to the stands. Though they buzzed with excitement, there was a clear exhaustion that existed among the crowd. The players on the field must have felt it too, as the Marauders came back strong — the team scored a touchdown on all 5 of the offensive drives that they played on the second day. The Buccaneers, on the other hand, were unable to score more than 1 touchdown, ending the game with an unfortunate 35-14 loss.

It was a football game never to be forgotten, and the school spirit that the Buccaneers displayed was what made it so memorable. 16 sports, one team. A football game stretched over the course of 2 nights, played by one team. Fans and faculty, one team. Go Bucs!