Aggies lend helping hand in Las Vegas

By Jake Ellis SPORTS EDITOR

LAS VEGAS — Smiles abounded outside the Thomas & Mack Center the morning before the quarter-final round of the Mountain West Men’s Basketball Championship on March 9. The Utah State Spirit Squad and pep band joined their counterparts from around the conference and the Goodie Two Shoes Foundation — a nonprofit serving disadvantaged children in Southern Nevada — to give out shoes, shirts and backpacks to 450 underprivileged kids in the Las Vegas area.

“It’s fun to see the little kids having a good time with the band and also with the mascots and spirit squads,” said Hillary Callister, a junior that plays clarinet in the USU pep band. “I think that it’s a really good thing they’ve got going on here. It’s a great opportunity to do something like that.”

It was a change of pace from the competitive nature inside the arena.

“They were so enthusiastic,” said Robbie Flaherty, an Aggiette and junior at USU. “It was fresh and nice to get into the more enthusiasm. You kind of miss that when you get into the game atmosphere… but when we’re with kids they just want to have fun and it makes me love this sport even more.”

Callister said it was a similar change of environment for the band as well.

“It was fun to play without being in a competitive spirit because normally we’re playing to hype up our team, but this time it’s just playing for fun and to hype up the kids and give them something to be excited about,” Callister said.

Lane Weaver, USU’s director of athletic bands, agreed but added that sports events are different for bands than teams and fans.

“It is a fun different environment, but you know in the musician side of the world — in the band side of the world — we’re always pulling for the other band,” Weaver said. “We don’t quite have the same sort of heated rivalries that the sports teams do. So we’re glad to hear other bands play well and our bands play well and it’s just kind of a different philosophy, different atmosphere.”

He added that the event is one of the band’s favorite parts of the Mountain West tournament.

“It’s one of our favorite things to do is to sit and be able to play tunes and watch kids with smiles on their faces dancing around, and it’s just a really nice way for us to be able to give back a little bit,” Weaver said. “It’s a nice way for us to get out and not only interact with the other basketball bands, the other pep bands from the other Mountain West schools, but to do something that’s entertaining for these kids that are coming in for the Goodie Two Shoes program.”

The event has been going on for nearly a decade.

Nikki Berti, co-founder and CEO of the Goodie Two Shoes Foundation, said they like to partner with the Mountain West because it helps the kids “see college in a different way.”

“We love this opportunity every year,” Berti said. “It’s such a great experience for all the kids to come out and get to see college in a different way and different opportunities maybe with the band or the cheer team or the spirit squads and interact and just have this amazing day out.”

Flaherty also expressed that she liked helping kids get interested in college by having fun.

“It was so awesome,” Flaherty said. “I think it was a really great opportunity for little kids to get out and just have fun with the cheer squads and just get into the university spirit.”

Javan Hedlund, the Mountain West’s associate commissioner of external communications strategy, said he thinks the event and the foundation are amazing.

“We hope it just continues to grow every single year,” Hedlund said. “We’re just trying to start with the grassroots in trying to get kids to start to love the Mountain West and our schools all the way from Utah State down to Air Force to Wyoming and across the board.”

— jacob.ellis@usu.edu