For the second time in three years, Missouri Western Athletics was recognized for excellence in community engagement as the department was awarded the MIAA Community Engagement Activity of the Year Award as selected by the NCAA.

Each MIAA institution is eligible to submit their best community engagement endeavor, in which the event had to take place during calendar year 2011.

The “Kid Fan Program,” which was centered around the NCAA Division II Women’s Basketball Championship held at Civic Arena in March 2011, involved over 800 area middle school students from eight schools each of which adopted a region of the championship.  The program which had been used at three previous women’s basketball championships in St. Joseph, was created not only to engage area youth in the championship, but to also help create atmosphere and guarantee at least 100 fans for each team during all games at Civic Arena, knowing that some teams have to travel long distances to get to the championship and their fans may not be able to follow.

Students studied all aspects of their region including; historical features within the geography of that region, institutions within that region and also the progress of the teams that potentially would come to St. Joseph for the championship.  Once the regional champions were crowned and schools knew who their adopted team would be, students created welcoming signs, posters and banners and met their teams upon arrival in St. Joseph to make them feel at home.  Then on Monday of championship week, each of the eight teams made a visit to their school and took part in a 90 minute assembly in which team members talked to the students about the importance of a healthy lifestyle and what it takes to be a championship student-athlete.  Once the games began at Civic Arena, the middle schools got to root their team on all the way through the championship.

Griffon Director of Athletics Kurt McGuffin accepted the award last night (Thursday, June 7th) at the MIAA Awards Banquet at the Downtown Marriott Hotel in Kansas City.

— MWSU Sports Information —