Levi’s Stadium Field Trip

Finn’s first field trip of third grade was to check out the new Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers. I volunteered to go, because I almost always volunteer to go on field trips. I didn’t realize it was such a hot commodity (the teacher did a lottery to chose the two chaperones); if I had, I would have bowed out and let a real football fan take my place. Anyway, we were taken on fancy buses about 20 minutes south to Santa Clara and arrived to find a team of stadium employees set to show us around. Here are some pictures of Finn and friends, and their opening pass-the-football activity.

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Our group was assigned to take a tour of the stadium first. Our guide talked a lot about football and the upcoming Super Bowl, which I found endlessly entertaining as a high percentage of the kids are not American and are blissfully ignorant about American football. She also made some attempt to talk about the geometry of design in the stadium, but really it was dawning on me that this field trip was pure 49er propaganda. The stadium is lovely though; here are a few pictures.

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A couple of the kids got to try on some football equipment.

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Then we went for a lunch break. Finn liked the charging station.

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After lunch we went to the “educational” portion of the field trip. They talked about lift and force with respect to throwing a football, and then the kids broke into groups and got to try out throwing, kicking, and handing off footballs. It was fun — I got to catch the footballs.

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They also had these screens up with different aspects of football. I don’t remember what they all were, but the biggest hit had the kids trying to follow along with a cheerleading routine.

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Here’s a short video. All girls and one brave boy.

Then they gathered in the big helmet for a class photo.

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The last bit of time was spent in the 49er museum. Again, this would have been really great for an actual fan.

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It’s a good thing I don’t mind the boys getting a free day away from school, because this was a nonsense field trip. The only purpose I could see was to try to recruit new 49er fans!