Bucs Combine NGWSD and WBCA PinkZone Events On Saturday.

Barry University will be celebrating the 25th National Girls and Women in Sports Day on Saturday, February 12th.

On National Girls and Women in Sports Day, thousands of sports educators, coaches, athletic directors, recreation directors, association members, sponsors, students, and parents across the country will show their support of the Day and of this year's theme, "Play, Believe, Achieve."

The Bucs have invited 30 – 40 middle school-aged female student-athletes to campus. From 11:30 am – 12:30 am, there will be two speakers, Drs. Duncan Simpson and Lauren Tashman (visiting assistant professors in HPLS), presenting on sport psychology topics. Following the presentation, the girls will join the Buccaneer softball team outside for a short demonstration and clinic. Lunch will be served at 1:30 pm, and we then invite our guests to join us at the women’s basketball game at 2:00 pm.

The women’s basketball team has designated the game against the Florida Tech Panthers as this year’s Pink Zone® game. The WBCA Pink Zone® initiative is a global, unified effort for the Women's Basketball Coaches Association's (WBCA) nation of coaches to assist in raising breast cancer awareness on the court, across campuses, in communities and beyond.

The team has planned a number of activities for the game:
-Fans are encouraged to wear pink, those who do get in free
-Fans wearing pink can put their names in a for raffle for prize packs, including PinkZone T-Shirts
-Raffle participants can elect to sign up for contest to win prizes such as Miami Heat tickets.

"The Pink Zone Campaign is a great way to bring awareness for breast cancer through the game of basketball," Barry assistant women’s basketball coach Cassie Bro said.

The WBCA began the WBCA Pink Zone in 2007 as an initiative to raise breast cancer awareness in women's basketball, on campuses and in communities. The late Kay Yow, former North Carolina State University head women's basketball coach, served as the catalyst for the initiative after her third reoccurrence of breast cancer in 2006.

In 2007, more than 120 schools unified for this effort and helped make the inaugural year a success. In 2008, over 1,200 teams and organizations participated, reaching over 830,000 fans and raising over $930,000 for breast cancer awareness and research. The 2009 campaign raised over $1.3 million, reached over 912,000 fans, unified more than 1,600 participating teams and organizations, and saw 56+ schools break attendance records at their event. In 2010, over 1,800 participants came together to surpass $1,045,000 in donations and reached more than 922,000 fans across the nation. Over 22 schools broke attendance records through their participation.

Overall, the WBCA Pink Zone has raised nearly $3.3 Million, has reached almost 2.7 Million fans, and has unified over 4,700 participants in only four years.