This Mom Made Some Unlikely Friends After Dropping Her Daughter Off At College

Many moms get misty-eyed at the thought of dropping their daughter off for college orientation. Danielle Clay, though, isn’t letting the experience get her down; she’s out living it up with the hunks.

Clay’s daughter, Avery Leilani is an incoming freshman at Texas State University and posted screenshots of pictures of her mother’s antics to Twitter. The text from Clay reads, “I made some friends. Don’t wait up.”

The series of pictures and text show Clay playing around with a number of glistening, shirtless, strapping Texas State football players.

Leilani, busy with a full orientation schedule, had no idea what her mother had been doing, and the text gave her no context for why or how she was playing football with a bunch of dashing young men.

In the two days since sharing the images, Leilani’s Tweet has been liked nearly half a million times!

Thanks to some of the exposure, national news outlets helped Leilani figure out just what her mom had been up to.

Junior Exploratory Professional Studies major, Gabe Schrade, who is a tight end, is one of the hunks in the picture. USA Today‘s Kalina Newman tracked Schrade down and asked him a few questions. The tight end explained that, “[Clay] said it was a selfie contest for prize money toward tuition. She walked over and asked us to make it special for her so we did our best improv, and it looks to have turned out well so far.”

“Our football team loves Texas State Students and [all] fans, especially the Moms!” Schrade told the newspaper. “I’d like to have a shout out to my guys Easy Anyama, Gabe Lloyd and Elijah Rogers,” the other strapping young men who are also in the pictures.

This was all news to Leilani.

“I just posted it to my Twitter thinking my conversation about my mom was funny. I didn’t expect it to go viral,” Leilani told USA Today. “I had no idea it was a for a contest.”

It may have been better for her to not know about the contest….she didn’t win anyway.

The winners in this situation are clearly Leilani’s mom and the internet.

People have had a blast commenting on this tweet, saying things like:

@AmberSymonee who wrote, “Somebody let me go to orientation with y’all as a parent.”

@emyrosa wrote, “Mom’s a babe tho — goals af.”

@shelby_denise97 was also pretty enthusiastic about Clay’s performance, declaring that this would be “me as a mom.”

Perhaps the funniest response to the tweet, though, comes from Leilani herself who wrote: “my mom got more action than me.”

Excellent work embracing your daughter, Miss Clay. Miss Leilani, keep up that sense of humor—there’s no need to rush into a relationship anyway.