On Thursday, at 7 p.m. in Carmichael Gymnasium, the N.C. State chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, along with over 27 other organizations, will hold a charity basketball tournament.
Called the Krimson and Kreme Hoopin’ for Hunger Basketball Tournament, its purpose is to raise money and donations of canned goods for Helping Hands Mission, a local charity, as part of their Thanksgiving food drive.
As part of a tradition within Kappa Alpha Psi, “Crimson” and “Crème” are spelled with Ks.
“It’s a tradition in our frat to spell everything with Ks,” said Tre McQueen, a senior in marketing and a co-organizer of the event.
McQueen said the primary purpose of the event was to not only benefit the University, but to also help the local community, particularly those people who are less fortunate than others.
“We decided to have an event on campus to raise money and food for families who are a little bit less fortunate,” McQueen said.
McQueen helped to organize the event with his brother, Chaz McQueen, a junior in education, Reginald Parks, a junior in sports management and Colton Palmer, a junior in communications.
“We were looking for something that we could do. We’re a fraternity, and as a fraternity, we have to do different events for standards.” McQueen said.
Although the idea was conceived just a month ago, the event has been well organized and planned.
Parks said the process of organizing the event took about a month.
“We kind of got everything together, made sure Carmichael [Gymnasium] was on board for it. We’ve been contacting all the organizations on campus to see who’d be willing to give to this cause. We contacted the [Student Media Association] and WRAL to get everybody on board who would be willing to give to the Thanksgiving Day initiative,” Parks said
According to McQueen, other groups have joined in support of the tournament, including fraternities from area universities.
“We’ve got Ravenscroft School. We’ve got Delta Sigma Theta from UNC. We’ve got a couple of our brothers from different chapters in the area, like the Delta Gamma chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi [from] Shaw University, the Gamma Omega chapter from St. Augustine’s University and the Alpha Kappa chapter from North Carolina Central University and the Iota Xi chapter from Duke University,” McQueen said.
Four teams will be playing in the tournament from Kappa Alpha Psi, Alpha Phi Alpha, 100 Black Men of America and Psi Beta Sigma. The tournament will be set up in standard bracket form, with semi-finals and a finals game.
In order to keep the audience entertained, the event will also have several games and activities, as well as a DJ and music.
“We’re going to have a [basketball] dunking contest and a couple activities between the two games to keep the crowd into it. We have a DJ coming so there’s going to be music, just [to] make it a fun atmosphere for everyone,” Palmer said.
The charity aspect of the tournament is still the focus of the event. Each participating organization will be asked to donate 10 canned goods and $2 for each member of that organization.
“For our particular fraternity, we have 15 members, so we’ll bring 10 canned goods, plus $2 per person, so $30, that’ll really build up with all of the different organizations we have involved,” Palmer said.
Donation bins will be available so that the public can contribute their share.
The Helping Hands Mission will receive all of the donations from this event.
“We got into contact with the Helping Hands Mission and decided to team up, we’re raising money and food to donate to them. We’re going to take the money and sponsor individual families for their Thanksgiving meals.” McQueen said.
Already, the efforts to get the event into the spotlight have paid off, according to Palmer.
“We have over 300 people confirmed to come on Facebook, and we’ve been taking in names of people from other schools so they can get into Carmichael. We have people coming from Duke, NCCU, UNC-Charlotte and from St. Augustine’s, so people from all over the community are coming and supporting it. We have alumni brothers [from] our fraternity who are also coming.” Palmer said.
According to McQueen, there is a continued increase in the number of organizations wanting to participate, although it is only a few days off.
“It’s over 27 total organizations that are involved in this right now, 21 on-campus and 6 off-campus, and it seems like the number’s growing every day, since someone else sees the [news about the] event and it’s like ‘hey, we want to help out’ and so it grows. By the time of the event, it’s going to be 25, 26 on campus organizations [that are involved],” McQueen said.
Even considering this is the first year of the event, the intention is to keep it running on an annual basis and to expand it further to involve more of the N.C. State community in future years.
“It’s pretty big already, but we’re trying to make it grow, and that’s the point of trying to make sure that everyone knows about it and is aware of the fact that we’re trying to make it happen,” McQueen said.
“Our goal, really, is to incorporate the N. C. State student body, but in upcoming years we hope to make it a community event, where really the whole Triangle area can get involved in this initiative,” Palmer said.
Palmer said although organizing the event has been enjoyable, he still wants the Kappa Alpha team to win the tournament.
“Personally, I think that we’ve done a good job thus far organizing, and I hope everything runs smoothly, but now on the other side of things, it’s still a basketball tournament and we still want to go ahead and win our tournament, get a couple practices in and make sure we go home with a [win],” Palmer said.
Parks expressed his hopefulness for the continued success of the event in the future.
“I feel as if anything you do for a great cause can have a great outcome,” Parks said.
