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FAIRBANKS, Alaska – Members of the Alaska Nanooks men's and women's basketball teams made their way over to Weller Elementary School on Tuesday (Feb. 28) to participate in Reading Day with the WES student body.
“We wanted to do something to have a culmination of February being the 'Love of Reading' month,” Weller principal
Lynn Weckesser said. “Mrs. Miller [mother of senior
Jarrett Miller] had the idea to have the basketball teams come over and support our love of reading by having these young adults come to demonstrate how they read and how important reading is in their lives.”
From the men's team, assistant coach
Eric Stang, seniors
Armand Burkhead,
Nico Matthews and
Jarrett Miller, juniors
Dominique Brinson and
Nikolaos Stathopoulos, sophomores
Sergej Pucar and
Stefan Tica and freshmen
Daniel Shaw,
Michael Keener and
Jesse Ward all participated in the event.
Taking part in Reading Day from the women's program were head coach
Cody Burgess, assistant coach
Jason Nichols and juniors
Adrienne Beans and
Jacqueline Lovato.
The day began with a student-led parade where each class marched around school with signs and costumes referencing their favorite books. UAF basketball members also partook in the festivities as they held up signs and marched with the young students all throughout Weller.
“For our student-athletes to be a part of that and interact with them, for a lot of them, it will bring back memories when they were in elementary school,” Stang said. “That parade was pretty awesome. For the half hour it went on, it got everyone pumped up for the rest of the day.”
Following that, players and coaches had three 30-minute sessions going from class to class reading excerpts from books and answering questions from the students. Twenty-two classes in all were visited by the Nanooks as grades ranged from kindergarten to sixth grade.
For the final hour of the event, the players and coaches moved into the gymnasium where they participated in drills and contests with students from kindergarten to third grade. After the first portion, students from the fourth through sixth grades filled the gym and players took on the Weller students in a few friendly scrimmages.
The highlight for the elementary students was cheering for and watching the Nanooks dunk the basketball. The final scrimmage did not disappoint the loud and crazy venue with numerous ally-oops and one final windmill slam dunk by Ward to wrap up the event.
“It is so positive, it makes learning and school fun,” Weckesser said. “It makes kids want to be here and I think it's nice for them to see student-athletes in their school, participating with them and wanting them to have fun learning.”
“I thought it was a good overall experience for the players to interact with the young kids, talk about reading and stress the importance of education,” Stang said. “Anytime you go to an event like that at school, the kids get really excited about it because they look up to the players. To them, they're celebrities.”
