Last season, the Aces had an awesome Fan Fest event at the Butler game. Is there another event similar to that for this year?
We are very excited to announce that the University of Evansville and the Athletics Department will be hosting another Fan Fest this season. On Saturday, November 3, the event is set to take place between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. along Sixth Street across from the Ford Center. The women’s basketball team will face USI at Noon with the men taking on Illinois-Springfield at 4 p.m. Our event will give fans the opportunity to have some entertainment in between the games along with enjoying a great day of basketball. Ace Purple is set to attend while food vendor will be present and there will be plenty of activities for kids. We would like to thank TRU Event Rentals for their sponsorship of the event. It will be held in conjunction with UE’s Homecoming 2012 events.
Put into perspective what it means to the athletic department and the university as a whole what it meant to win the MVC Academic Award.
Being really successful at anything is fulfilling. We compete with outstanding academic institutions so it is particularly rewarding to see our Student/Athletes have the highest grade point average of all of the schools in our conference. We announced this publicly to our Student/Athletes as an Academic Honors breakfast and the event was attended by the MVC Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner. It was really fun to watch the Student/Athletes doing high fives and the faculty and administrators at the event gave them a standing ovation. In turn, our Student/Athletes applauded all of the faculty who have helped them so much toward achieving this award. On balance, it is very gratifying in today’s world when there can be many negative stories about big-time athletics to know they we stay true to our message in working to assure our Student/Athletes are successful on and off of the playing fields.
How big of an honor is it to participate in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic this year? What types of advantages are there to playing three games in three days at the Ford Center?
Coaches vs. Cancer is a nice event for us. We have the opportunity to play at a BCS school in Notre Dame who will be very good this year. Three games in a row is a lot for the home portion of the event, but we felt our fans would like an extra chance to see the Aces play this year. The three teams involved were all in post season last season so the competition will be strong. We are providing a special “promotion” for one of the games that you will hear about soon. We also have a chance to get another shot at an Ivy League team in Yale. The game against Western Illinois was hard fought last year and will be again this year. UE often competes against the MAC conference in a lot of things so remember that Buffalo is a member of that conference which has some pretty good teams as well. All three games will be good and I hope our fans carve out the time to help us succeed! If you love basketball, that group of double headers should be a great feast of games!
