Partnership with Milwaukee Bucks airing on Fox Sports Net
Released: November 15, 2002
The alumni wheelchair basketball program at UW-Whitewater has a unique relationship with the Milwaukee Bucks that will be told in a story airing on Fox Sports Net throughout the state of Wisconsin later this month. The Bucks are a major sponsor of the alumni wheelchair team donating $5,000, official NBA uniforms and warm up gear.
This is the second season that the UW-Whitewater alumni team and the Bucks organization have teamed up on the hardwood. The choice for the Bucks to renew their deal was easy. The alumni team won the wheelchair national championship last spring in its very first season as a sponsored Bucks team.
Melvin Juette, a member of the wheelchair team, coordinated the deal with the Bucks. Juette says the team was created out of need for many people with disabilities who have a strong, competitive drive to play wheelchair basketball. The Bucks team is termed “alumni” because their eligibility to play at the collegiate level was up. Many of the current wheelchair Bucks players competed on the UW-Whitewater wheelchair team. Some of those players are still students finishing their undergraduate degree or working on their master’s degree.
Players featured in the story are Juette, Joey Johnson and Eric Barber. They all say the Bucks’ sponsorship is invaluable. Juette says without it he would have retired as a player. While Johnson and Barber say they likely would have ended up other locations trying to finish school while also playing competitive wheelchair basketball.
The story on the team will air during the Milwaukee Bucks pre-game broadcast at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 27 on Fox Sports Net. Both the Bucks wheelchair team and the UW-Whitewater college wheelchair team will scrimmage during halftime of the Bucks game in Milwaukee on Nov. 30.
- N & P Staff,npa@uww.edu
