The road less traveled had many a fork 🍴in it yesterday with stops ✋in DeaconTown, Hillsville, Galax and an astrik next to Bluefield College.
In our search for places where athletes compete with everything they have but far away from the spotlight we struck oil at every stop along the way.
Stop #1 was a rather unique one in that involved the Atlantic Coast Conference once again as Wake Forest was set to host East Tennessee State in Women’s basketball 🏀.
Earlier this fall I had received an email from Wake offering me tickets 🎟 to their home games and I was surprised that the individual games were $10 but you could get a Season ticket for just $35 or roughly a few bucks less than one home game for their Men’s games. I made a mental note to take $35 with me whenever I could make the trek South.
Life is about showing support for the underdogs and Wake is just so easy to pull for anyway. I checked the schedule late Sunday night 🌙 and was surprised that the start time was listed as 11:00AM.
I woke up and drove down there with my $35 in hand and was pleasantly surprised to find out the ticket office was closed for the day and everyone entered for free.
I receive sports marketing emails from a number of ACC schools every week and would be quick to point out that Wake leads the league in promoting their athletic teams with clever marketing ideas. The premise for the game was to find a sponsor for the day and then simply don’t charge for admission or parking. They then took a page out of the ACC Women’s basketball tournament and had local elementary school students bussed in for the contest.
ETSU had defeated the Lady Deacs last time they played back in 2019 but this time around the home team was up to the challenge in front of what I would estimate being 40 adults and a couple hundred energized school children.
The contest was being televised by the ACC+ network and I wondered who that I knew might be willing to watch along at home? I was very fortunate to find my dear friend and former Sports Editor at the News Virginian, Rob Sisk at home in Northern Indiana. We were able to watch the game together and mix in a fun game within a game of Where’s Waldo ? There were so few people in the spacious Coliseum that I was able to tast out every desirable seat in the place and Rob would send me a picture 📷 everytime I appeared on his TV screen. Who says you can’t have fun while having fun ?
The visitors managed to hang tough out the gates and the game was knotted up at 12-12 when the opening quarter ended. The lead was only 6 points at the break before something rather impressive occurred over the final 20 minutes.
A 5’10 guard from Colony, Texas named Jewel Spear decided to put on a show that would take Wake fans all the way back to their glory days when Chris Paul delighted everyone in Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Spear hit one of her 3’s from the WF logo and on her final play in the fourth quarter drove hard to the basket and drew an even harder foul that sent her sprawling out of bounds. She shook off the pain long enough to swish free throws for her 39th and 40th points of the game. She left the game for treatment on her elbow.
Wake closed out the contest 90-58 and moved its mark to 9-1 on the early season.
Still to come – the Rest of the Day !
A.S.P.N on The Hill 