‘Canes for life!’ UM students celebrate team’s ticket to championship game
The University of Miami campus the Friday morning after the Hurricanes football team clinched a hard-won spot in the Jan. 19 national championship game hours earlier wasn’t a mix of emotions.
It was an emotion: jubilation.
“We’re ready to watch the national championship. Canes for life! Canes forever! Go Canes! I love my school,” cried sophomore Micah Guice on the Foote Green fronting the Otto G. Richter Library.
The pre-law track 19-year-old accounting and political science major was with fellow members of UM’s Student Affairs department’s Orientation & Commuter Student Involvement group to guide students on the last day of move-in week.
The Coral Gables campus wasn’t packed Friday afternoon. But on Thursday night, while the Fiesta Bowl game was on TV from Arizona, UM had a watch party for students and their families at the campus lakeside nightspot, the Rathskeller.
The campus and student center may also have a buzz again on Jan. 19, when everyone who can’t get a ticket to the big game finds a place to watch the championship, played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.
MORE: Can you still get a ticket to see UM in the championship game? What’s the cost?
Junior Courtney Hartung, 20, a marine biology and ecology major and Spanish minor, watched the Fiesta Bowl inside the Shalala Center’s Iron Arrow room at a private watch party Thursday night.
“It was so amazing. I was so hyped up the entire time, jumping out of my seat, yelling at the screen, as if Carson Beck could hear me himself. It was so electric in there,” said Hartung, one of the orientation group’s leaders.
But you won’t find Hartung on campus on the 19th. The sport fan is going to the national championship game at Hard Rock Stadium.
“Absolutely, 100% I’m going to the national championship,” she said. “It’s the first time that it’s been a whole national championship with the whole team being in there. They’re going to be having student tickets. Doesn’t matter how much it is. I’m going to be sitting in that stadium for my family, for the Canes, for myself as a student growing up with the Canes, and I’m absolutely 100% going to be there.”
She, like other early-arriving students who were around the campus on a sunny, 80-degree January day, had two things on mind: upcoming classes and the Canes’ heart stopping College Football Playoff semifinal win over the Ole Miss Rebels thanks to quarterback Carson Beck’s 3-yard touchdown sprint in the game’s last 18 seconds. The Canes won 31-27 after several lead changes.
MORE: Hurricanes’ semifinal came down to Carson Beck in crunch time. He delivered
Sophomore Anna Mondschein, 20, a creative advertising major minoring in photography, marveled at Beck’s heroics and saw the bigger UMiami picture.
“I feel like it shows what Cane spirit is about,” she said. “Even if we feel like we’re down, even if we feel like it’s not going to happen, we know it’s going to happen because we believe.”
Fellow orientation school spirit leader Marian Morales, 20, a sophomore studying biochemistry and molecular biology, watched the Canes-Ole Miss battle from home.
“The Hurricane magic, and the Hurricane energy, just felt all over, everywhere, all the time. And I just felt that we were so united as a school,” Morales said. “It was so electric to feel all the energy.”
She’s planning on going to the championship game, too — if she can score a student ticket. Like Beck and wide receiver Malachi Toney and their much-needed fourth-quarter touchdowns, Morales is giving it her all.
“I will try my hardest to get that ticket.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2026 at 4:37 PM.
