The UA Men’s Wheelchair Basketball team will play an exhibition game against the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity as part of a fundraiser this Thursday, Oct. 20.
Admission to the game is $5 and students can pay with their Action Cards. All proceeds will go directly towards the WCBB team. The game starts at 7 p.m. in the Student Recreation Center.
To make things more interesting the Phi Gam team, which has no wheelchair experience, will be starting the game with a 40-point lead. The WCBB said they hope for a large crowd and recommended that people buy tickets in bulk. Sororities are highly encouraged to attend and will receive points from their perspective organizations if they do.
“This is something to kick off the season and have a little fun,” said men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball coach Brent Hardin. “What our are going to do is spot the fraternity 40 points. They will probably beat them 80-40 or something like that.”
JD Derby, a member of the WCBB, said the idea for this event originally started out as a joke between team members a couple weeks ago. It continued to come up and eventually they decided to make the idea a reality.
“It was completely random and a joke but as we talked about it more, we realized that this could have some real potential,” Derby said.
Each member of the team is required to raise $1000. Derby said he hopes this game will raise enough money to make it a staple fundraiser for the team in the future.
“We are really hoping to make this a once-a-semester event on campus,” said Derby. The team said they hope not only to repeat this but also to be able to expand it.
“We have a lot of ideas for making this event even bigger. We really want this to become something that students look forward to every semester,” he said.
The WCBB will play about 35 games during the regular season and then travel to the National Intercollegiate Championship at the University of Illinois. The team said they want to improve themselves and their skills during trips to the Final Four, which they have reached the past two years, and aim to compete in the men’s championship game this season.
“Most people that I talk to think our guys are favored to go pretty far this year,” Hardin said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see our guys for a championship this year.”
Hardin encouraged fans that have not witnessed to wheelchair basketball to come out Thursday and check out the team for themselves.
“If they haven’t seen basketball before, people will be surprised with how athletic our players are,” Hardin said. “Our guys and our girls are some of the best athletes on campus.”
