Silver City, N.M.- Last Monday on March 21st, Western New Mexico University hosted the fourth annual Hoops 4 Hope event, which turned out to be a huge success.
The event, which was led by the Special Needs Committee and Office of Communications, was open to community for those who suffer for a physical or mental disability.
The event was held in the Intramural Gym and provided activities such as volleyball, football, basketball, and much more. T-shirts and free pizza were also offered at the event.
One activity that brought the crowd together was the dancing as shown below:
Abe Villarreal, WNMU Director of Communications, stated in a press release, “This is one of our favorite events to host on campus. It is important for our student body to interact with this special community of people that teach us so much about themselves and ourselves.”
There are four goals, or “hopes” that the event accomplishes: a hope to bring students together to learn about people with disabilities, a hope to build common ground among different people through athletics, a hope to have students feel comfortable with people of different backgrounds, and a hope to learn more about how we interact with each other as humans.
All four of these goal were met as SAAC (Student-Athlete Advisory Committee’s), most of whom were football, basketball, and volleyball athletes of WNMU, showed up to bring a good time to the participants.
“Making everyone happy and seeing them have a good time makes me feel the same,” said WNMU’s women basketball player Kenzie Rinehart. This is Kenzie’s third time doing this event and most of the participants remember her name. This shows that they have a great time with the athletes.
Open Door, which is an Adult Day Care Center in Silver City, brought a few of their people to the event as well. “It was a fun event and I would like to come back next time,” said Open Door worker Martina Castillo.
This is the fourth time the WNMU has hosted Hoops 4 Hope. For more information on this and other events, send an email to news@wnmu.edu or call 575-538-6336.
