April 04

The Final Four: Dominic Romeo Blogs From Indianapolis As Part Of The AllstateNABC Good Works Team

Posted by michelleschmittyoung on April 4, 2015 in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Senior forward Dominic Romeo is in Indianapolis for the Final Four as part of the Allstate NABC Good Works team, along with four other Division I players and five players from Division II-III. He will blog for Red, White and Bronco throughout the weekend to talk about the experience. Click here to read the original release on the award.

Friday, April 4

Today has been a bit of a whirlwind of a day—a somewhat crazy whirlwind, but an exciting whirlwind. Without a lot of sleep, I left Notre Dame and headed South toward Indianapolis, where I eventually arrived around Noon. As soon as I dropped my stuff off at the hotel (we’re staying at the self-proclaimed “nicest hotel in Indiana”, the Alexander Hotel), I met up with Santa Clara assistant coach Pruitt and we grabbed lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory. We talked about our recent breaks from basketball, our families, the season. It was really nice to be able to catch up with him in an informal setting.

After lunch I went back to the hotel and met up with my brother, Nic, who had just gotten in from San Francisco. We were then given a number of really nice gifts for attending: Oakley sunglasses (balllinnnn), books and snacks. Soon after, we met some of the other members of the team, and they all seemed really cool. There is a huge range of kids here—ranging from an engineer from CalTech to an All American from the University of Virginia—and all seems so interesting. I’m excited to get to know them over the course of the next couple of days! Later.

Tonight we had our first event. We went to a super fancy restaurant where we were given hor devours on silver platters by dudes wearing fancy gloves. But, best of all, our team had its own private room with a foosball table and Wii in it. This made it so that we effectively had a choice between hanging out in the fancy room with a lot of wealthy people eating fancy appetizers or playing games in our own room with one another. Naturally, we chose the latter, and some really serious competitions resulted in far more noise than that restaurant was probably used to…haha.

But, best of all was that Dickie V (Dick Vitale) was there! He gave a wonderful speech that touched on so many important topics that were really close to all of our hearts—the importance of service, the value of being a well rounded person, the beauty of the sport of basketball, and the need for a loving family. After the inspiration, I figured it was only natural to end the evening by taking a selfie with Dickie V himself. Thanks for reading. More to come when I get a minute! Dom