For some students, a bottle of wine and a nice dinner make a good Valentine’s Day. For others this year, it’s peanuts and Cracker Jacks.
Some valentines are taking it out to the ball game, as Feb 14. happens to fall on Tiger baseball’s opening night.
Dakota Conravey, finance senior, and Kelsey Schexnayder, marketing senior, are embracing the coincidence by celebrating their first Valentine’s Day together in Alex Box Stadium.
“I’ve actually never been to opening day,” Conravey said. “This will be [Schexnayder’s] fourth opening day, so I said ‘This is what we’ll be doing’ and we got tickets in the grandstands.”
Conravey said their Valentine’s Day meal would be chicken tender baskets at the game, rather than the typical sit-down dinner date, although they might go out to dinner Saturday.
Schexnayder said the two have been on several dates to sporting events, including Pelicans and Saints games as well as LSU events.
“You get to see another side of the person,” Schexnayder said. “Dakota’s competitiveness really comes out.”
Romance and athletics seem effective ingredients in a modern love potion, as Hunter Geisman, LSU ticket office coordinator, can attest.
Geisman proposed to his wife, Cami Geisman, at a basketball game in December of 2008.
“We always went to a lot of sporting events together in college,” Cami Geisman said. “That was a part of our relationship.”
Cami said when they were juniors at the University, she signed Hunter up for one of the fan activities on the court during a basketball game while he was in the bathroom. So when she was asked to participate in one of the events two years later on the night they were engaged, she knew he had a part in it.
“When I was leaving the court after the event, he was right on the edge of the court, down on one knee,” Cami said. “I remember the student section cheering, and he had bought tickets for my entire family so they were cheering from the upper deck.”
The couple married in 2009.
Cami said they went on a lot of gameday dates while they were in college because they were usually free for students, and they both loved sports.
“I can imagine it would not be fun for a girl who didn’t like watching sports,” Cami said. “But we like them.”