 Walking in here, the energy, it takes you over. There is something in the air here. You can feel it. It's like an electric feeling. You can feel the anticipation. The Pink Crew is the official student section Purdue University for the men's basketball games. It has about 2,800 regular members. When you're going up, there's no assigned seats. It's general admission. You're going to be sitting near someone else who is there for the exact same reason you're there to be loud and they're there to have a good time. And it's really fun to be able to experience that with thousands of other people. My love of Purdue basketball started way back in third grade for me. My dad got tickets for some games and he started taking me here to Mackie and I just fell in love. I slowly just tried to learn everything I could about the game. My first Pink Crew game was the exhibition game just this year. That's all I could think about all week. Really, for the whole semester, I was just ready for basketball season to start. Getting to be able to come to the game, sit among fellow students and just the absolute madness that is Mackie Arena keeps you in the game. That you're just ready to go the entire time. It was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life. I almost don't measure my weeks anymore by like Sunday to Saturday. I do it more by basketball game to basketball game, especially once the tournament starts up. It's just kind of all-encompassing, but in like a really good way. When I came to Purdue, I was an only child. I'd honestly never been away from my parents for more than like a week, if that. Honestly, just joining organizations is what helped me make friends. I don't know that I remember my exact first game, but I remember just feeling like I hadn't really experienced something like that before, where everyone, you know, especially like in my generation, like no one was sitting on their phone or, you know, thinking about something else. Like everyone was just cheering about the game, so I think that was a kind of big moment for me. I knew I wanted to be a bigger part of it. So my expectations joining paint crew, I just wanted to be more involved in games. I didn't really expect to become as close friends with people on the board. Back in 2019, we had a game the next day against Texas. One of the guys on the board at the time had said he thought we should do something for Andrew Jones, who had just come back from leukemia treatment. I think around like 8 o'clock that night, went out and bought a sheet, got new paint that we needed, all that kind of stuff came back and debated over what the heck to write on it for hours. I think we finished around like 3 a.m. We got to Mackie the next morning and laid out the sign, but it still hadn't really hit me quite what we had done. I've had a lot of people in my life who've had cancer at the time. My dad had gone through some cancer treatments that summer, but I think kind of in the process of making it, you're thinking of everyone you would have liked to be that for. Some things are bigger than basketball, and I think Purdue does a really great job of not just recognizing it, but kind of teaching Purdue students to recognize it and how important that is. When I'm at Mackie Arena, I feel the happiest I ever am. The team, my friends, and the rest of the fans just give me so much joy and so much excitement. The Goo Goo Goggles are our team name. It's kind of like an unofficial thing that we go by. We use it for everything, and it's just become a big part of who we are as a friend group. It sounds really silly, but for us, we think it's the funniest thing. Any time someone's having a down day, you can just say Goo Goo Gaga, and then it'll hopefully brighten their day up because it reminds them of all the good times we've had for the Florida State game, which was the ACC Big Ten matchup. We were there for almost 24 hours. We had to camp out overnight, but then with that, we got first row. We were right down the Florida State bench. It was so worth it, and it was so enjoyable for us. For me, Pencrew was a small step to finding my happiness and finding my perfect fit at Purdue. I was able to make friends, build relationships, and also watch something that I loved to watch. That small step really helped me to find my place at Purdue, and it's something that I cherish. To me, Pencrew is one of my favorite experiences throughout all of college. I think about when I'm old and telling my grandkids or something about my college days, and Pencrew's honestly going to be pretty far up on that list.