Above photo: The USF St. Petersburg basketball club’s Purple and Teal game Friday had each side sporting the colors of domestic violence and sexual assault awareness. Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
By Jeffrey Waitkevich
The USF St. Petersburg basketball club is more than just a club. It’s a platform.
Aleek Nibbs, basketball club president and junior marketing major, knows he can do more than just organize competitions with the club. He also uses it to address issues in the community.
On Friday it was time to highlight sexual assault and domestic violence.
With April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Nibbs said raising awareness for the issue is important to the community and to college campuses.
The game, fittingly dubbed the Purple and Teal Game, due to domestic violence awareness being represented by the color purple and sexual assault awareness by teal, is an event Nibbs plans on hosting every April.
Raising awareness and standing for something, Nibbs said, is the key to hosting good events.
“In order to have great events that people enjoy as well as learn something, you have to integrate a message behind it,” Nibbs said after scoring three points.
Representatives from the Wellness Center along with Jacob Diaz, dean of students, gave a brief presentation before tip-off.
Mandy Hines, victim advocate at the Wellness Center, said that awareness is imperative to reducing the cases of sexual assault and domestic violence, which would change the #MeToo movement to the “#NoMore” movement.
On the court, Rahndyh Bonhomme, a junior health science major, led the purple team to a 50-43 victory over the teal team, with a game-high 18 points.
After the game, Bonhomme stressed that it is more than just a game because of what it symbolizes.
Nibbs plans to host a game to raise awareness for mental health in the fall, continuing his trend of initiating dialogues about important issues.
Albert Moreno, former chair of Student Government’s appropriations committee, was the oldest participant in the game at 31. He said that seeing student-led initiatives was refreshing.
However, no current members of Student Government were in attendance, nor were any administrators aside from Diaz.
The game featured a halftime performance by the HERD Step Team.
The basketball club reached out to Big Fish Co., a local T-shirt company, to make custom shirts for the game – a part of Nibbs’ initiative to support the community as much as possible.
Nibbs resurrected the basketball club last semester and has handled all of the marketing efforts since, including designing the logo, posters and promotion.
The 56-member club usually holds formal practices Sundays and pick-up games Tuesday and Thursday nights, though most of the scheduling is done through the messaging app GroupMe.
To join the club, one should email Nibbs, who adds the members to the group chat.
Nibbs can be reached at aleeknibbs@mail.usf.edu.
Although the team also competes on occasion, that is not the primary focus of the club.
The club is a mix of former basketball players and fans, so beyond practicing, the team hosts watch parties and video game tournaments at the Edge.
Nibbs didn’t play basketball in high school, but between having a dad who played pro basketball overseas and living in Miami, he fell in love with the sport, the Miami Heat and his favorite player, Dwyane Wade.
