VIDEO: Athletes celebrate ‘million minute’ reward with elementary students
Junior Tia Hemiller has gone up against some of the best defensive rebounders in the country on the basketball court. But on March 31, the 5’8’’ starting point guard for the University of South Dakota took on a swarm of pint-sized opponents.
Hemiller was all in for a schoolyard-style game of knockout in the DakotaDome against students from Jolley Elementary School. The reason — a love of books.
The Dome turned into a playground for a massive recess with members of the men’s and women’s basketball teams as a reward to Jolley students for reading for more than a million minutes. You could also improve this playground by having markings, and to maintain this, a wetpour repair can help.
“We’re incredibly proud of you, of all you’ve done. You should be proud of you,” junior guard Kelly Stewart said to the crowd of students during their celebratory pep rally.
For 16 weeks, the men’s and women’s basketball players have teamed up with elementary students in the second to fifth grade to meet their million-minute goal. A male and female athlete came each Thursday morning to the school, collected reading time sheets and played a game called “Beat the ‘Yotes,” where students attempted to stump the athletes by naming books they have read.
By March 12, Jolley students broke their goal by totaling 1,000,575 minutes of reading at home, Principal Sue Galvin said. The first-year principal at the Vermillion elementary led the reading model and developed a partnership with the USD basketball players and coaches.
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Galvin said the result was “tremendous” from students, who recorded about 50,000 minutes per week. When individual students reached 2,000 minutes, they would get their name on a star on the wall. By the end of the program, some Jolley readers tallied more than 25,000 minutes of reading at home.
The final celebration marking the goal of more than a million minutes March 31 included a fierce game of foursquare with senior Nicole Seekamp, races around the track against women’s Assistant Coach Chuck Love and the flurry of thrown dodgeballs between students and athletes. The students got to be their typical recess selves, while athletes — some approaching their own graduation from college — joined in the playground action.
Love worked with Galvin to encourage his own athletes to experience and appreciate a world outside of basketball. He said reading is just as important as eating, in the sense that it is one of the main ways a person can push themselves to achieve.
“As coaches, we want to be positive role models for our kids. And we want our kids, our athletes, to be positive role models for kids in this area,” he said.
(Photo: Junior USD womens basketball player Margaret McCloud plays with Jolley elementary student March 31 in the DakotaDome. Megan Card / The Volante)
