Luke Rapley

EDAP 7802 (2^nd hour – Saturday)

Dr. Bill Kruskamp

Basketball All-Star Game

Coaching basketball has been a part of my life every since I began teaching. Throughout the years, my teams have had many seniors that have graduated and moved on to college or others areas of life. Throughout the county, there have been numerous student athletes graduate, as well. Some of these basketball players were good enough to be invited to prestigious post-season all-star games. However, some of the best players in the county are not selected for an All-Star game at the end of their high school careers. There are many fans around the county that have enjoyed watching the basketball for many years. Over the past year and a half, a few coaches began talking about putting together an All-Star game for the counties graduating seniors that deserved to play one last time in the county. No school wanted to take the lead on this project until my school decided to tackle the project. The decision to undertake this project was not decided until nearly the end of the season and we only had a few short weeks to start from scratch and create an all-star game for the graduating seniors. From the outset, we wanted to keep the cost of running the event as small as possible. The first step in for this project was to notify all of the coaches in the county about the game. We emailed every coach in the county and asked them to nominate 1-2 seniors from their team that they felt deserved to play in a county All-Star game. Many coaches were excited about this opportunity for their athletes and sent in player names right away. Some coaches did not have any seniors on their team this season and other coaches needed to be reminded on one or more occasions to send in their player names. We did not want to harass the coaches but we were working on a short turnaround time to make this game happen. While waiting for players to be nominated, many other aspects of this game were attended too. Since cost was a major factor, we solicited the help of the major high school apparel distributors in the county. With their help, we were able to get Russell to donate uniforms for both boys’ teams and both girls’ teams and a local vendor provided t-shirts for all players and coaching shirts for all coaches involved in the game. Sponsorship was solicited from other vendors throughout the county to offset the costs of running this event. In exchange for their sponsorship, we had large signs created as an advertisement for the sponsors. We needed to secure sponsorships because we did not want to use the gate money to pay bills. We wanted the gate money to be donated to Relay for Life. Through the generosity of local businesses, sponsorships covered the expenses of the event and the gate money was donated to Relay for Life. It is hard to explain all of the little things that needed to be attended to in order for this event to be a success. As the event date drew nearer, the more running around there seemed to be. The concession stand needed to be stocked, information needed to be disseminated to the press, programs needed to be created, etc. Even though an administrator was not in charge of this event, I learned a lot from helping with this event. One of the most important things I learned was that the community will come together to support you if you can show them what and why you need there help. The community realized the significance of this event and cherished the opportunity to help. At the conclusions of the event, the coaches involved in planning the event came together and threw out some ideas on how to improve the event for next year. One advantage next year will be the amount of time to plan the event. This year we only had a few short weeks and next year we will begin planning much earlier. This event could have never been created alone. Everyone involved in making this event a success deserves a congratulations for helping create a great event to allow the county’s senior players one more chance to player in front of the hometown fans.

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