Relive Onward State’s Road Trip To West Virginia
Alexa, play “On The Road Again” by Willie Nelson.
Onward State’s football beat hit the road to start the 2024 football season, making the roughly three-hour drive to Morgantown, West Virginia, to cover the Nittany Lions’ opening game against the Mountaineers.
Let’s take a look back at our team’s brief journey to-and-from Morgantown.
Friday
Since Morgantown is only a few hours away, we all were able to hang out in State College for most of Friday. This way, no one had to miss any lectures on the first week of classes. We ended up hitting the road around 3 p.m.
The drive was, by all accounts, pretty boring. We made the most of the time by playing car games, listening to music, and introducing our newest beat member, Mitch, to some of our road trip traditions.
Morgantown is barely over the border from Pennsylvania in West Virginia, so 95% of our drive was through the rolling hills of southwestern Pennsylvania.
We stopped at our hotel in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, to drop off some of our stuff before carrying on to Morgantown to see what was going on in town and grab a bite to eat.
I have to be honest, Morgantown was pretty disappointing. There were several abandoned storefronts, which was surprising based on the reputation it has as one of the “best college towns in America.”
We walked up and down the main drag and stopped for dinner at “Almost Heaven,” a bar and grill that we were told was one of the most popular in town. It gave off a similar vibe as Brother’s in State College, but emptier.
The food was fine, but the weirdest/most interesting part of the whole experience was DJ Gucci White Kid as the evening’s entertainment. The crowd in this place was not in the mood for a DJ, except for Onward State’s own Hailey Stutzman, who won a free CD.
Overall, we were fairly surprised with how dead Morgantown felt on a Friday night before the “biggest home opener in 30 years.” The most popular bars had no lines and the streets felt pretty empty.
We headed back to our hotel in Waynesburg to rest up before the early kick the next day.
Saturday
Gameday.
We got up, fueled ourselves with some hotel waffles, and headed to Morgantown around 8 a.m. After sitting in some gameday traffic, we arrived at the media parking lot around 9:15 a.m. and headed towards the stadium through the sea of tailgate lots.
You all know what happens next. Penn State took care of West Virginia with ease, cruising to a 34-12 victory, even with an unexpected multi-hour rain delay at halftime.
Since the game was originally expected to end around 3 p.m., we had planned on driving back to State College on Saturday night. Despite the delay, we stuck with the plan and headed home around 8:30 p.m.
The drive home was just about as dark and dull as expected. We were all beat from the long day, but we tried to keep ourselves entertained with more car games.
We made good time getting home and got back to State College around 11:15 p.m. That’s all from this quick trip, but don’t worry, there are much longer trips to come this season.
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