When you are creating your own Promotional idea its a little more fun because you get to make up all of the guidelines to the process. One of the criteria for the 12 games is to try and find a Kevin Bacon type Six degrees of Separation reason for attempting to promote that particular contest.
The second game on Monday was set to be a No Brainer for me as the NAIA school that I am connected to up the road in Beckley ( West Virginia Tech) was playing Men’s basketball at Bluefield College. Tip was set for 7:30 pm and the loop was underway to watch the Fighting (Lawrence) Nesselrodt’s play hoops.
Tech prefers to go by the name Golden Bears 🐻 but to me its just for fun to pay tribute to the Man I like to call “Big Picture “. The plan would hopefully include dinner 🍽 with Ness but the loop hit a snag when the Tech website posted a note that no visiting fans would be allowed in the gym for the game due to Covid precautions.
I reached out to the folks at Bluefield and received a prompt response of basically No outside fans at all from either side would be allowed in but that there would be live streaming available.
Wanting the glass to always be half full I told myself that I found out before I completed the drive 🚗 up and as I made the U-turn it appeared to work!
Now in search of the next experience I received a Hot 🔥 Tip about a hoops game between the Cavilers and the Blue Devils !!!
While I did follow along with the streaming service later I simply cannot count this as One of the 12.
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.
It was a night we will not soon forget. We hope you won’t, either. Thank you so much to everyone who came out and made the Dedication Celebration everything we could’ve hoped for!
The second Game of Christmas 🎄 (yes, there’s 12) took us to the Tar Heel state for the National Championship tilt in Men’s Soccer ⚽️
Clemson came in ranked #8 in the Country and squared off with #2 Washington on the Pitch for the right to call themselves Natty Champions. The WakeMed Soccer ⚽️ Park was near its capacity of 10,000 when the match started at 2:07p.m.
Clemson had survived Penalty kicks on Friday night 🌙 versus the #4 Fighting Irish and shortly after UW held off a late rally by #3 Georgetown to advance with a 2-1 victory.
Unlike some of the other NCAA major title games admission was under $20 per for GA and the majority of the crowd was wearing the Orange of the Tigers 🐅.
UW was making its initial appearance in the Finals while Clemson was looking to add a 3rd trophy 🏆 to their case back home but it was 1987 when they last captured the crown 👑.
Unfortunately for the squad from the Pacific Northwest an unforced error in the first possession gave the Tigers 🐅 a 1-0 advantage inside of the initial 40 seconds. It was a failure to connect on a clearing effort by the goalkeeper for UW that allowed the shot into an unmanned net that would stand as the game winning goal.
Clemson would add some insurance 10 minutes later to push the lead out to 2-nil and the Tigers 🐅 turned their defense loose for the remaining 80 minutes. The victory gives the Atlantic Coast Conference a much needed Natty after a disappointing football season prior to falling short in the Men’s ACC – Big 10 basketball 🏀 challenge.
54° and Sunny plus a energized crowd made for an enjoyable experience! Even more enjoyable if you were wearing Orange…
A.S.P.N on The Hill 