A UNC fan’s birthday gift crosses one off the bucket list and brings his dad to tears

Cody Blankenship was 3 months old when his father, John, took him to his first UNC basketball game.

The two have gone together to numerous athletic events in Chapel Hill over the 21 years since then, hitting a handful of basketball games and some other sports each year. But they’ve never sat down in those highly coveted seats to see the Tar Heels take on Duke in basketball.

That’s about to change. Cody surprised his father Saturday with tickets to the Feb. 8 game in Chapel Hill – and family members captured the moment on video during John’s 53rd birthday dinner in Virginia.

“There ain’t no freakin’ way! Are you serious?” John says in the video, which Cody shared on Twitter. “That’s a bucket list.”

John only gets teary-eyed in the video, but Cody said that “he bawled at one point.”

The two have always dreamed of getting their hands on UNC-Duke tickets, Cody said, but could never afford it.

“We usually only get to go to the games when the team plays the smaller schools at the beginning of the season due to the lower ticket cost,” Cody said. “I recently finished my master’s degree and got a good job and was able to pay the 1,000 bucks for the tickets.”

Cody drove the roughly five-hour round trip from Lynchburg, Va., to Chapel Hill to pick up the tickets in person about a month ago.

“I wanted to make sure they were real before handing over the 1,000 bucks,” Cody said. “I’ve had to hold the secret in for a while.”

This story was originally published December 12, 2017 at 9:36 AM with the headline "A UNC fan’s birthday gift crosses one off the bucket list and brings his dad to tears."