RODNEY WHITE / THE REGISTER
Jenny and Tim Hugunin of Norwalk, Iowa, donned their patch-laden overalls for the party outside LandShark Stadium.
By JUSTIN RICE
Special to the Register
Miami, Fla. — Carting a red cooler around Land Shark Stadium on Tuesday afternoon, Marshal Versteeg wore jeans and a thin black jacket five hours before what was flirted with being the coldest FedEx Orange Bowl in the game’s 76-year history.
The 2002 Iowa graduate moved to South Florida six years ago, but wasn’t fazed by the weather since he grew up on a dairy farm in Sibley.
His girlfriend, however — a Boca Raton, Fla. native — looked like she was dressed for a game at oft-chilled Kinnick Stadium.
“I’m fine now but later I know I’ll be cold,” said Carly Feduniec, sporting black North Face boots over double socks while holding a hooded sweatshirt and winter jacket with a fur-lined hood.
“I’m prepared. I got hand warmers.”
Temperatures dipped to 49 degrees by the time No. 9 Georgia Tech and No. 10 Iowa finally kicked off, shattering the previous Orange Bowl record for the coldest kickoff of 57 degrees in 2008.
Tuesday night was the coldest in a week of weather that was the chilliest South Florida has felt in nearly a decade.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=D2&Dato=20100105&Kategori=SPORTS020502&Lopenr=1050811&Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=1" target="_blank">Iowans in the parking lot laughed at the wind-chill advisory in South Florida, knowing temperatures in Iowa have dipped into the negative double digits.
South Beach was mostly filled with hardy Hawkeye fans to start the week, according to Brain Fox, a 21-year-old Iowa senior majoring in business.
“I went in the water. It was a little cold, but this is like April back home — this is like a heat wave,” said the Charles City native while wearing a yellow Orange Bowl T-shirt, cargo shorts and sandals.
Fox’s friends all wore jeans on the partly cloudy afternoon mostly in the high 50s.
“I don’t see a need to wear pants,” Fox said. “Back home it’s 15 below.”
Wearing four layers of clothing, Mara Frazier of Boulder, Colo., was prepared for the area’s chilliest cold snap in nine years.
“This was supposed to be a mini vacation away from the cold,” said the Iowa City native who got her teaching certificate from Iowa in 1987. “Today in Boulder, it’s just as warm — if you forget the foot of snow.”
Randy Ferdig, 52, of Iowa City, was glad to get in a few 80-degree beach days before the arctic cold front that has gripped the eastern half of the country set in.
The only warm clothes he brought were a jacket and a sweatshirt.
“This is nothing,” he said while tailgating behind a red Chevy pickup with two Hawkeye window flags and another 10-foot tall flag planted next to the car. “I’ll take this any day.”
Ferdig has held Iowa season tickets for 25 years.
“It feels like a fall football game at Iowa,” he said before adding that he thought the weather would benefit his team. “They’re used to playing in this. I was talking to one of the equipment managers and he said they’re real happy. The temperature is good for them. They won’t have any heat exhaustion.”
While Hawkeye fans were in paradise this week, Florida farmers were feeling the pain. Crops across the state were destroyed as temperatures were forecast to dip below freezing in some inland areas of the state.
“Those are the things you go through no matter where you’re farming,” said Versteeg, whose parents still run a dairy farm in Sibley that also grows corn and soybeans. “It’s unfortunate. We’ve dealt with hail and drought. That’s the risk you run when you farm.”
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