Bus Tour Feature

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I N A U G U R A L S T A T E W I D E B U S T O U R C O N N E C T S F A N S , P R O V I D E S P L A Y E R S C H A N C E T O M A K E A D I F F E R E N C E By Patrick Stumpf

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2014-15 Milwaukee Bucks Tipoff

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I N A U G U R A L S T A T E W I D E B U S T O U R C O N N E C T S F A N S , P R O V I D E S P L A Y E R S C H A N C E T O M A K E A D I F F E R E N C E

It’s safe to say the past few months have been plenty busy for the Milwaukee Bucks.

Following the sale of the team to new own-ers Marc Lasry, Wes Edens and Jamie Dinan, the verbal emphasis has been squarely focused on the future. That foundation was laid following the selection of Jabari Parker with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2014 draft and the acquisition of Jason Kidd as the 14th head coach in team history. The average age of the team’s 15 players is currently under 24 years of age.

A renewed, palpable excitement surrounding the team led to the planning and launching of the Bucks’ first-ever statewide #OwnTheFuture Bus Tour, an initiative aimed at connecting the team to fans across the entire state of Wisconsin. Span-ning six cities in two weekends in September, the tour included stops in Madison, Janesville, Kenosha, Eau Claire, Wausau and Appleton.

“[The bus tour] has been part of our strategy to really shore up support locally— first and foremost, we’re in Milwaukee, we’re Milwaukee’s team— but really looking at ways that we can go beyond that,” said Dustin God-sey, the Bucks Vice President of Marketing.

“With it being a young team with a lot of new faces, we saw it as a good opportunity and a fresh approach to get out and spread

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the news about what was going on with the team, and share that excitement with people in our state that we haven’t necessarily had in recent years.”

Along with Bango, Hoop Troop, Rim Rockers and members of the Milwaukee Bucks Dances, third-year forward Khris Middleton and rookie Johnny O’Bryant hit the road, conducting basketball clinics at Boys & Girls Clubs and YMCA’s in the selected cities, and managed to do a little site-seeing, too.

Middleton, who embarked on the first leg of the trip Sept. 19-20, visited the American Family Chil-dren’s Hospital at the UW Health Center in Madison, which preceded a stop at the UW-Madison campus and a stroll down State Street to see the State capitol.

After holding a skills camp in Janesville, the tour made its next stop at NEWaukee’s “Summer’s

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Last BBQ” event and basketball court unveiling at the AR-Tery, a creative revitalization project on Milwaukee’s Beerline Trail. The group continued on to Kenosha Saturday morning where they held a second skills camp open to the public at the YMCA, capped off by a tour of the Jelly Belly Factory in

Pleasant Prairie with local children.

Overall, Mid-dleton said he got a sense for how genuinely excited fans are about the 2014-15 season to get underway.

“It was great to see people out,” said

Middleton, who is entering his second season in Milwau-kee. “You can see that fans are excited about us this year. It’s great to get out and meet the fans that support us, and we wanted to go out there and support them as well.”

For the approximately 100 children who participated in Middleton’s clinic at the Janesville Boys & Girls Club, lead program coordinator Kaitlyn Teal said the event was a big success.

“The kids loved it. After [the Bucks] left, that’s all they talked about,” Teal said.

“What I think impacted them the most was just to be able to have the skills camp, because I have a lot of kids that love basketball. Practicing with a professional gives them the drive to keep going with it. A lot of the kids we have here are low income-based kids who probably would never have this experience if [the Bucks] didn’t come to us.”

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Because it’s the first event of its kind, Godsey

said there was a lot of uncertainty with just how

much response the tours would generate. But

after experiencing it all once-through, he said

it’s become clear that the event’s potential is just

beginning to be tapped into.

“The feedback from media, as well as the

people we interacted with, has been great,” he

said. “From day one being on campus in Mad-

ison, seeing the social exposure take off, from

people getting their pictures taken on State

Street, to parents of 10-year-old kids in Eau

Claire who got a chance to meet an NBA player … the reaction was so positive.”

The 36th overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft out of LSU, O’Bryant traveled

farther north on the second leg of the tour Sept. 26-27, which made stops in

Eau Claire on the UW-Eau Claire campus, the local YMCA and a high school

football game, the Wausau Boys & Girls Club, and finally an appearance at Oc-

toberfest in Appleton.

For someone like O’Bryant, who hadn’t played a single game in the

NBA, the trip not only afforded him an opportunity to act as an ambas-

sador for the team and the city of Milwaukee, but it gave the Cleveland,

Miss., native an opportunity to travel through the state of Wisconsin for

the very first time.

“I’m not really a big name here yet, but just the way fans reacted to

me was great,” he said. “When you get that far up north, I heard that’s

Minnesota territory. So when you get up that far and people are still ex-

cited, it’s a pretty cool deal. There are some great small towns in north-

ern Wisconsin, real peaceful. Overall, it’s a great state.”

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Moving forward, Godsey said the hope is the tour will be able to reach out to even more towns across the state through the utilization of social media.

“We plan to do something like this every year and make it even larger, adding social components to it,” he said. “Even if it’s a town of 400 in northwest Wisconsin, if they’ve got huge Bucks fans, we want to go there. From our standpoint, the goal is how we make it bigger and more impactful, how do we reach more people.”

While the expectation is that the event will continue to grow next year, for all of those were able to experi-ence the inaugural tour, the experience was both im-pactful and humbling.

“It’s definitely inspiring,” said Middleton, a native of Charleston, S.C. “Where I’m from, we didn’t have any pro sports. So it’s cool to go out, reach out and meet with kids, see the smile on their faces and make their day brighter. Growing up, I wish I had the opportunity to do stuff like that or meet people like that.”

For a local Boys & Girls Club like the one based in Janesville, Teal said players like Middleton are making a huge impact, even if they aren’t realizing it.

“Any way these kids can have a positive role model, it’s wonderful,” she said. “A lot of these kids come from single-parent households, so for them to be able to [see Khris] … they can say this guy is a good role model, he has good values, he has goals for himself. It’s just an awesome figure for them [to look up to].”

With sights set toward the future on the court for the Bucks in 2014-15, the addition of the statewide Bus Tour demonstrates the team is looking ahead in more ways than one. Most importantly, however, it’s given them an innovative way to make a difference in communities across Wisconsin.

“Just seeing [the kids’] faces and seeing how excited they were about everything made me feel re-ally good,” said Teal. “When I see that they’re having fun with it makes me feel like, ‘OK, we did something good today. We actually impacted these kids.’”

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