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Community Corner

Rye Y March Madness at Manursing Tonight

Rye YMCA's fundraising gala helps raise money for its "Strong Kids" campaign.

The Rye YMCA’s first ever basketball-themed March Madness Gala Bash takes place Friday  from 7 to 11 p.m. at Manursing Island Club as a fund-raiser for a worthy cause –the Strong Kids Campaign. 

Here’s how the hoop-themed gala came about.

“We were batting around ideas about how to stage a new kind of fund-raising bash for the Y Strong Kids Campaign, and the brainstorming churned up the idea of a basketball-themed gala pegged to the upcoming March Madness NCAA tournament mania,” said Sally Wright, director of fund-raising development at the Rye YMCA. “After all, the Y invented basketball.”

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To capitalize on the popularity of March Madness, Wright says they decided to move their old, Caribbean-themed 'Barefoot Bash' fundraiser to Manursing and reconnect with the Y's basketball history. It took a winning-team, Y- effort to make that happen, she said.

Rye residents Mark and Mary Ellen Doran and Kevin and Jo Tice took the ball and ran with it as chairs of this year’s inaugural. Kat Doyle, Laura Kelleher, Sue Kelly and members of the Auxiliary Board assisted with their vision and creativity in shaping the evening’s activities.  Rye Y CEO Gregg Howells and the staff –Sally Wright, Penny Cozza and Lyell Lewis were key in the paint for planning the fundraiser.

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The evening at Manursing will include Big East basketball games on three hi-def screens with Y rooters are encouraged to dress in their favorite collegiate gear.

There will also be friendly pop-a-shot games, “Top Pop” team bragging rights, as well as music, food stations, wine and beer. Auction items include trips to London, Paris and the Kennedy Space Center. Proceeds from the event go directly into the “Y Cares” financial assistance program of the Rye Y.

In 2010, the Y awarded more than $350,000 in scholarships to families in need through Y Cares.

The YMCA connection to the game goes all the way back to 1891 when the Y invented basketball. Two Y visionaries, one you probably never head of--the bossy, sickly Luther Halsey Gulick-- and his underling associate--James A. Naismith,  are credited with inventing basketball at Gulick’s suggestion.

It was James A. Naismith (Nov.6, 1881-Nov.28, 1939), a sports coach and innovator who invented the sport of basketball in 1891 at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Mass. He wrote the original basketball rulebook, founded and coached the University of Kansas basketball team; the only losing coach in the school’s storied history.

That would not have happened had Naismith not moved from his native Canada and gone to work for Hawaii-born Luther Gulick (1865-1918) at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield.

 Gulick was looking for a way to let his young charges blow off steam during those cold, pent-up New England winters.  He urged Naismith to invent a game that could be played indoors.

 Naismith came up with  a soccer ball and two peach baskets placed ten feet high at opposite ends of the gym. He  handed the players the ball and told them to run up and down the court,  shooting the ball into the basket over a prescribed period of time, and the team with the most points at the end of that time won.

Thus was the game of basketball born, along with the red-triangle YMCA “Body, Mind, Spirit” logo devised by  Naismith’s boss  Gulick,  a believer in “muscular Christianity.” Gulick went  on to become a medical doctor and the first director of athletics in the NYC public school system.

Further information: The Rye YMCA, 22 Locust Ave.; phone: 967-6363; www.ryemarchmadness.org.

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