‘A little slice of what we’ve all been missing’
Severna Park’s Murphy enjoys Army-Navy game
Midshipman 1st Class Maeve Murphy was happy all day.
Most Anne Arundel County residents didn’t have the opportunity to attend this year’s Army-Navy game, in which Army defeated Navy, 15-0. Murphy, a 2015 Severna Park High graduate, did.
On Saturday, the former Falcons girls soccer player led the 5th Battalion across a fog-swathed Michie Stadium during the
Brigade of Midshipmen march-on, the first of its kind this year due the pandemic. The masked Brigade followed its host, the Corps of Cadets, before pouring into its side of the stadium, socially distanced from one another and the other group.
Murphy, of the 23rd Company, did not begin her college career as a midshipman. She’s initially picked George Washington for her higher education after graduating from Severna Park in 2015. But the Washington school wasn’t a good fit for her; she felt the draw to one closer tohome.
“My whole life, I’ve grown up seeing the midshipmen walking in downtown An-
napolis. Being around, you always hear about them,” Murphy said. “Being on the other side, you just learn so much more about the experience and what it actually means to be a midshipman. I love being on the other side of it.”
Then, this year, Murphy learned she’d been named 5th Battalion Commander.
“They look at how you interact with your peers, they look at your physical performance, and it’s just kind of about showing up to school every day and just doing the best that you can, which is something that I try to do to get the most out ofmy time here,” Murphy said.
For the Brigade, the trip from Annapolis to the Army-Navy game was an unusual one, full of coronavirus protocols to the location itself. The midshipmen rose in the middle of the night for their travel, boarding buses around 2 a.m. The game was held in West Point for the first time since 1943.
Murphy felt pleasantly surprised by how seamless it all felt, from the trip to arrival to the swift start of the game. And, of course, the normalcy of marching onto a field before a Navy football game with her comrades.
“To be able to do the march on was something that I had always wanted to do. It was something I was looking forward to doing this year when I found out I’d gotten the position,” Murphy said. “It was a surreal experience to be able to do it and be able to do it here.”
The final fall semester of Murphy’s senior year was marred every which way by coronavirus restrictions. Before the Naval Academy restricted liberty in midNovember, Murphy turned to a different kind of family for comfort.
“I have so many friends who have basically become my family that I can spend time with,” saidMurphy, whoseown parents moved to Louisiana after her high school days. “It’s really been a blessing to have been fromhere and to be able to go to school here.”
But Murphy was never sure she’d be allowed even a piece of what she’d come to love at the Naval Academy this semester. So much, she said, fell by thewayside.
Soon, Murphy will move on to prepare to become a Navy pilot. But sitting with friends to watch Navy football play one more game during her time as a midshipmen, she felt the world took a little break from the darkness.
“It feels like we’ve gotten a little bit of a slice of what we’ve all been missing,” Murphy said. “Thiswasn’t the semesterwe all thought we’d have and it wasn’t the semester I thoughtwas going to be closing outmy senior year here. So it’s nice. We’ve lost a lot of milestones due to COVID or had to change a lot of things. So being able to say that we still got this one thing is really nice.”