Party in Husky Stadium: UW players danced their way through delay when lights went out

When the wind started whipping and darkness fell upon Husky Stadium on Friday, the Washington Huskies football team came alive. 

With 11:36 to go in UW’s eventual 24-21 win over No. 23 Oregon State, the lights went out. At first, it seemed like the sudden dark was in celebration of Husky running back Wayne Taulapapa’s four-yard rushing touchdown, a play that finished off a nine-play, 66-yard drive. 

The lights dimmed and remained that way for an awkwardly long time, including during Peyton Henry’s PAT. After a few minutes of confusion, referee Michael Mothershead announced to the crowd that the game had been delayed due to an issue with the lights. 

During the 25-minute break, the UW football players did their best to stay warm amid the fierce wind blowing in off Lake Washington and stay loose for whenever the game did resume. Meanwhile, the crowd tried to stay warm by singing along to the music playing over the stadium loudspeakers. 

Once Miley Cyrus’ 2009 megahit “Party in the U.S.A.” started to play, wide receiver Rome Odunze knew what he had to do. 

“I was dancing, man,” Odunze said. “I was dancing, trying to stay warm, trying to keep my legs and all that. They put that (Miley Cyrus) on, and I know the lyrics to that thing. I was singing out loud with the crowd. Party in the USA and that’s what we wanted, a party after the game. So hopefully I brought that into fruition.”

Quarterback Michael Penix Jr. also appreciated the musical stylings of Miley Cyrus, but he had a different approach to staying warm during the delay.

“Hannah Montana (Cyrus) was going crazy, the whole crowd was going crazy with that one, but no, I was sitting on the heater. I was cold,” Penix said. “When the lights went off, that is when the wind started picking up. I don’t know if that had something to do with it, it was crazy though. It got cold at that time. Maybe just because I was sitting down a lot, but I was sitting on the heater.”

The wind kicked into high gear almost immediately after play resumed in the fourth quarter, reaching 13 miles per hour. Head coach Kalen DeBoer admitted that the wind might have had an impact on a few of Penix’s passes along with the UW kicking game, but his quarterback refused to blame the stiff breeze for any errant throws. 

Penix finished the game with 30 completions on 52 attempts, with one touchdown pass, one interception, and a 108.3 passer rating. 

“I don’t make no excuses,” Penix said. “If I don’t make a throw, it’s on me. I’ve got to fix it, I’ve got to feel the wind and throw it the right way so the wind can blow it where I want it to. Man, it was a great game. Guys made plays when they needed to. That was a great win, and a tough win.”

For DeBoer, it wasn’t the first time he has been involved in a football game power outage, and it definitely wasn’t the worst weather he has ever seen. Back in his playing days at the University of Sioux Falls, a Rapid City storm dumped 14 inches of snow during a USF game against the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and knocked out the power in the locker room. 

DeBoer saw it again in 2018 as the offensive coordinator at Fresno State, when a blown circuit breaker led to a 30-minute delay in the Bulldogs’ game against Hawaii. 

With the power outage coming immediately after his team tied the game, DeBoer’s main concern was on keeping his team focused on what they had been doing successfully in the second half. Momentum is hard to gain, and even more difficult to keep. 

“The biggest thing I was probably trying to address with the guys was how hard they had fought to make it a 21-21 score, and we had just gained the momentum, and just to get their minds back on how it felt … [to] leave it on the field for the last 11 or 12 minutes, and they did that.”