Tomorrow at the Nutter Center, Wright State’s women’s basketball team hosts Youngstown State for Education and Hoops Day. The program welcomes 15 local schools to the game to provide a large crowd for the team and provide a fun day of education of fitness and nutrition to the students.
“It’s a good day,” Wright State coach Mike Bradbury said. “It’s good for the young kids; it’s good for our players. I’m looking forward to it.”
“What we’re here for is our student-athletes,” said Athletics Department marketer Brandon Hays. “We’re up in attendance but a lot of these girls have never had the feeling of playing for 2,000 of their own fans. It all started trying to give them that opportunity.”
Bradbury will welcome the students as they arrive along with a guest speaker from Premier Health at Miami Valley Hospital who will talk about healthy living. The students will participate in a pre-game worksheet that will answer nutrition questions asked by players through the video board. During game breaks, there will be activities on the floor with the teachers for extra entertainment.
“It’s not to make money; these kids all get free tickets,” Hays said. “It’s for them (the team) to play in front of the crowd they deserve and the other part is to get kids on this campus and to try to make fans for the future.”
Hays is expecting around 2,000 people to attend the program plus their usual attendance.
“They (the players) will be excited and very appreciative,” Bradbury said. “Hopefully they’ll play really hard and really well.”
Last year’s event was scheduled by Wright State but every participating school had a snow day. Hays is optimistic that the weather will hold off this year but said, “Everybody do a snow dance for us.”
On Jan. 22, the Raiders lost on the road to the Penguins in a 70-75 battle and will attempt to split the yearly series with them. Since then, the Raiders have won two straight and are coming off of a game against Oakland where they scored 108 points, a school record against a Division I opponent. The game will tip-off at noon.
