A Week at Wake: Saturday

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The aroma of bacon and biscuits wafts through this morning’s tailgates at Allegacy Federal Credit Union Stadium, where fans, including many Family Weekend entourages, are gathering to cheer on the Deacs against Georgia Tech.

Between the first and second quarters, a surprise unfolds on the field: What seems like an ordinary “Guess the Song Lyrics” game ends with Liam Chafin, an anesthesiology resident at the School of Medicine, getting down on one knee and asking his girlfriend, Alexandra Piazza, to marry him. “I felt famous,” says Piazza, a labor and delivery nurse, reflecting on the proposal later. “Everybody was cheering for us.”

The couple met online about three years ago while living on opposite sides of the Florida-Georgia line. After a few months of video calls, they met up for sushi in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. They were so engrossed in conversation that their parking meters expired, and they both found tickets on their cars at the end of the night. 

It was soon clear that they were in it for the long haul. Piazza decided that when Chafin moved for his residency, she would go, too. And when they visited Winston-Salem on a snowy day, they felt that it would be the best place “to grow our lives together,” Chafin says.

After they moved here last year, Chafin started mulling how to propose. He managed to find a day off when Piazza’s family would be in town. They wanted to go to the game that day, so how would he make a proposal work?

While he was still puzzling it through, Chafin flew home to Atlanta to let his parents know he was planning to propose. On the plane back to Winston-Salem, a stranger sitting next to him provided the answer. The seatmate had mentioned hanging out in a sports bar before the flight, so Chafin asked if he knew how to get on the scoreboard during a Wake Forest game.

“You should aim bigger,” Chafin recalls the stranger telling him. “You should aim to go on the field.” He passed along a phone number for Athletics. Chafin called, and the rest is history.

The crowd’s roar “was a very, very warm welcome into joining the Wake family, and we are so excited for what these next four years have to hold, and beyond,” Chafin says. The couple is planning a small wedding in Europe this spring.

The game concludes with an overtime loss by one point. As always, the loyal fans who stay till the end of the fourth quarter link arms and start to sway when they hear, “Dear old Wake Forest. …” Even visiting parents know the words at the end: “Mother, So Dear!”