Met Coach Leavitt, signed my program from the first game!

[MikePhillips]

After 9 years of carefully carrying this around, I got to finally meet Coach Leavitt in person and he signed-

My program from the first ever USF game

My student ticket stub

1997 USF Season Schedule

The old school shirt I wore the first ever USF game

This was awesome, also this introduces my wife Jennifer and I to everyone on the board. I attended USF from 1996 to 2001, I loved it, I miss it, and glad to have been part of this school.

Enjoy!

[MikePhillips]

also, I'm the guy who's team crashed and burned at the red bull flugtag

[Matt]

welcome to the board...and yea you guys did crash and burn.  i was a little embarrassed.

[Brad]

Welcome aboard Mike, hope you'll be an active board member here with your fellow Bulls.

[Bull Dozer]

Welcome to Thunderdome biatch 

[E.T.]

Welcome !

Our 3,911th member ...

Go BULLS !!!

[BleacherBull]

Your first posts were incredible.  Unfortunately, you've set a standard for yourself that will be difficult to exceed.  Looking forward to your future posts.  GO BULLS!

[Rizman]

Mike, where have you been.  I expect you to take over the top posting spot with that much enthusiasm.

Go Bulls

[MikePhillips]

welcome to the board...and yea you guys did crash and burn.  i was a little embarrassed.

"add insult to injury" was the quote of the day

Not only did we crash and burn, but they ambulanced my cousin to the hospital with a destroyed nose

Here is what's funny about flugtag-

1) Your trying to build something that will fly

2) You've never attempted anything like this before in your life

3) You can't rehearse it, you can't practice, it's nearly impossible to do a "test run" with the exception of pushing it down your street

4) There are no 30 foot platforms over water anywhere in this area where you can test it

5) Even if you could test it, chances are you'd have to completely rebuild it because hitting the water from 30 feet is brutal

The lifeguard team had a guy who is a well known airplane & ultralite designer, custom build their glider in a hanger. They had to have spent thousands of dollars on it, easily, and must have spent 4+ months building that ultralight.

We bought our hanglider sail from a guy named Malcom, who owns http://www.wallaby.com/ . We sat with him for almost 2 hours, and asked him tons of questions. We told him everything, how we designed the cart, everything. He specifically said, with our entire team there-

"Make sure your glider is nose down coming off the pier. Measure your glider to be competely falt, then go about 2" nose down in the front"

It was the only advice we took from someone else, and it caused our glider to do a front flip

But in all honesty, even if we knew that was going to happen, I'd still do it all over again. We were the only team that showed any type of school spirit for USF. We crashed and burned like almost every other team there. At least our craft provided tons of shade to everyone on launch day, unline the UT's flapping silver fallace LOL

[AndytheBull]

Great to have you on here Mike....I came up and met you guys at Flugtag and had a couple of pics with you and the team I'll  figure out how to post later.  It was hard to see from where I was, but I think you guys still went further than the team of UCiF engineers that had their skit song as "Its Raining Men". lol