Yo si le voy, le voy al Columbus

Since soccer is BIG in our house, we have been loving the recent success of the Columbus Crew. For his birthday, we were able to take Grandpa Keller to his first Crew game. This night, the black & gold were playing in the Eastern Conference semi-finals against the Kansas City Wizards. Columbus won in dominant fashion, before a rowdy crowd. I think Dad really enjoyed it.... I know we did.

On November 13th, we attended the Eastern Conference Championship, featuring the Crew versus the Chicago Fire. This will go down as the most fun I've ever had at a sporting event. The atmosphere was electric. The crowd of 16,000 was much louder than the 100,000+ who attend Buckeye football games. Ian brought his friend, and soccer teammate, Brad Hakim.

Nathan watched with interest, since he had trained with the Fire goal keeper, Jon Busch, for a few summers. Busch won the Major League Soccer goal keeper of the year award this season, and is still the goalie coach for Team Ohio FC (Ian's club team). Regardless, Nathan rooted against Jon and for a Crew win. His wish came true, as the Crew won 2-1 with a come from behind victory.

After the game, there was a HUGE party in the tent next to the stadium. Inside the tent, we saw Ian & Nathan's old soccer coach, Mark McMahon, with some of his fellow Irish buddies. We stuck around and talked soccer for awhile. Until.... the Crew supporter groups [Hudson Street Hooligans, Crew Union, Local 614, and La Turbina Amarilla] came marching into the tent. After this, we were stuck in the middle of a drum beating, singing, chanting, jumping, and dancing mob. As Nathan said, "dude, it was AWESOME!"

As for the title of this post... this is a chant [among many others] sung by the supporters groups at every game. "Yes I go, I go for Columbus." GO CREW!! Beat New York for the MLS Cup on Sunday, November 23rd.