Becoming one of the student managers for the Men’s Basketball team made me feel privileged to serve. The idea of creating a Salute to Service game was brought to my attention by my Posse Veterans mentor here on Wesleyan’s campus. In my opinion, it’s hard to do a Salute to Service game on the same day as Senior, then on top of that Homecoming. Veterans were honored during pre-game, where there were not many people in the stands. Another disappointing factor for that particular, the Vietnam Veterans in town shared that before Covid they would have a section blocked off, just for veterans. That did not happen my freshman year. Overall, I still had a great time because I got to meet veterans that were in the community and to put names to faces.
Adding context to the Posse Program, the requirement is to have one on one meetings with your Posse Veteran Mentor. me and my mentor would have these conversations about the mistakes made during that game. In One particular meeting, she had the idea in the beginning of the fall semester in 2022 about having a Salute to Service for the Men’s Basketball game. To the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been any game from another sport on campus for honoring veterans. This was so easy for me because I was enrolled in Coach Reilly P.H.E.D. class that fall which gave me the opportunity to have more personal conversations with Coach Reilly. That class met 3 times a week which was great. When the opportunity presented itself, Coach Reilly immediately said yes to have such a game for basketball. This had a personal connection with him because his dad was a World War II veteran, serving in the Marines. What was nerve reckon, he left me in charge to organize the event.
