Electrifying dunks, musical chairs and dazzling dance moves were a few of the many highlights from Monday night’s inaugural Midnight Madness event at Don Nasser Family Plaza.
The Student Athletic Advisory Committee hosted the two-hour event and provided free food, games and roster introductions for both the men’s and women’s teams to tip off the basketball season.
Athletes competed in a three-point and dunk contest, while students took part in a relay race and enjoyed an intense battle of musical chairs.
Shortly after, the student section cheered on impressive performances from the Dancing Divas of State and SFSU Dance Elite.
“It was great to be able to see not only our student-athlete community together, but our students engaging with our student-athletes to really broaden the community that we’re creating for athletics and being able to support everyone through that,” said Kimberly DeBoer, the president of Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.
DeBoer mentioned how Alexsandra Alvarado, a guard for the women’s basketball team, came up with the idea of Monday night’s event. Alvarado detailed how the group put the event together in two weeks and hope to make improvements going forward.
“We’re definitely excited to host it next year and to get even more of our student community involved to continue to support our teams,” DeBoer said. “Not only the women’s and men’s basketball teams, but continuing to do this for all sports. We’re excited to get everyone involved with the athletic community.”
An unexpected participant, Johnson Kilgore, a second-year Kinesiology major, came down from the student section to participate in the dunk contest as a spur-of-the-moment addition. Kilgore didn’t disappoint. After he rocked the rim with a windmill dunk, students rushed the court in amazement.
“Just feeding off the crowd,” Kilgore said. “It’s always been my dream to play basketball so when a bunch of people out here and they want to see me jump, I’m going to jump because that’s what I do.”
Kilgore was surprised by the atmosphere in the gym and expressed how the event exceeded his expectations.
“I feel like it should be one every other home game. It gets more people all in before the games, this would be kinda tough (great) or even after a good win, it’d be really tough and we all could come out here and do what we did tonight,” Kilgore said. “It would be lit.”
Jonath Roth, a senior who’s in his second and final season with the team, felt the event was a success and was a good foundation for building a connection between athletes and students at SFSU.
“This is my second year here and we didn’t do something like this last year,” Roth said. “I think it’s obviously a great thing to be a part of and let everybody know that we have a basketball team here because a lot of people on campus aren’t even aware that we exist. The support for the first two games was great. So hopefully, this will only increase that for sure.”
Roth went on to mention how even after this season when his last year of eligibility is up, he would try to find the time to return for next year’s Midnight Madness to show his support for both teams.
