‘A feel good day’
Hoops for Hope still successful after years
About 50 to 60 participants with Down Syndrome learned moves from UT’s basketball players for three hours, getting high fives and playing alongside their roll models.
“It’s just a feel good day,” FHS athletics director Donald Dodgen said Saturday. “You come in feeling bad; you leave feeling good.
“This (event) has grown every year … it gets bigger every year,” he said. “It’s good for the Farragut community; it’s good for Farragut High School.
“I’ve got a majority of our cheerleaders, our dance team … 15 coaches coming today,” Dodgen said. “I’ve got eight or nine teams of Farragut High School players here to help.”
And, “I’ve got a bunch of our FHS special ed kids playing in here,” he added. “It’s just a really good day.”
“It’s a fun event every year, said Angie Holbert, executive director for Down Syndrome Awareness Group. “We always enjoy it. It’s just a fun time to see our UT athletes get together and have a fun day of basketball.”
FHS cheer team greeted the participants and other visitors as they entered the doors, then FHS and UT volunteers helped participants practice and prepare for their game.
Trey Sexton, then a sophomore at Farragut High School, started hoops for Hope 18 years ago.
“He wanted to put together an Eagle Scout project for Boy Scouts,” said Trey’s father, David Sexton, who now heads Hoops for Hope. “The last requirement to be an Eagle Scout is you have to do a big service activity.
“And, when he was about 14, he had the idea to do something like this,” David said. “So our family spent about a year, figuring out how it might work, and then we reached out to the University of Tennessee athletic department, talked to men’s basketball and women’s basketball.
“We said, ‘Look, we have this idea. This is what we’d like to do. Would you be willing to be part of it?’ They said, ‘absolutely,’” the dad related. “So, we organized this. We put it together, held it at Farragut High School here in 2008, and we intended it to be one time — one year.”
But, “after we did it, everyone said, ‘It’s great. Let’s do it again,’” he recalled. “So, we just did it again and again and again. And, here we are at year 18.”
Meanwhile, Trey, who was 16 when the first Hoops for Hope was held, is now 32. He went on to graduate college and to a two-year mission trip with his church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and graduated from dental college for oral surgery.
Now, Trey is an oral surgeon with four children.
About the number of participants, “there are, on a typical year, from 45 to 55,” David said. “We would have, at least, 60 volunteers … coaches, family and friends and people who just come to support. We’ll have another couple hundred people.
“A lot of these participants have been here all 18 years,” he said. “A lot of volunteers have been here all 18 years, and it’s this wonderful community event.
“I love it,” David said. “It’s a way to have a special day for our friends, adults and youth with Down Syndrome and their families to let them know we love them and care about them.”
And, “the UT Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams are just so wonderful to be here every year to serve and be part of this,” he said. “We’re just going to keep doing this as long as people want to do it.”
