MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - All of those school buses sitting out in the WVU Coliseum parking lot this morning could one day deliver far-reaching benefits to West Virginia University.
 
Why?
 
How often is it that you see more than 7,500 local elementary school students on a college campus at one time during a normal instructional day?
 
Well, it happened this morning when the West Virginia University women's basketball team played Bryant University at the special tipoff time of 10 o'clock.
 
That's 10 o'clock in the morning.
 
"I'm not a morning person so it took them to talk me into this," West Virginia coach Mike Carey admitted following his team's 94-48 victory over Bryant.
 
The person having to do most of the talking was West Virginia University assistant marketing director Carly Slater, who mailed out flyers to all of the area elementary schools this summer asking them to take part in this unique promotion.
 
All of the flyers were opened, and most of the schools came. Only Preston County, under a two-hour delay for inclement weather this morning, was unable to attend or another thousand kids would have been here.
 
Slater's pitch included free admission to all students, staff and chaperones. Bringing bag lunches was encouraged, and each school was assigned its own cheering section.
 
She also made it clear that this was not going to be a day off from school, which makes this promotion different than similar ones done at other places. 
 
Educational workbooks were issued to the children focusing on the importance of staying physically active, eating healthy and maintaining an overall healthy lifestyle.
 
Instructional booths lined the Coliseum concourse and educational videos ran on the video board throughout the game. North Elementary School principal Natalie Webb was consulted heavily on the educational materials.
 
There was also a special halftime speech focused on anti-bullying.
 
The presenter? 
 
Batman, of course!
 
By the end of lunchtime, the students were back in their buses heading home.
 
"It was a great atmosphere," Carey said. "The girls really loved playing in front of it, and it was a good deal."
 
It was a good deal – a very good deal for everyone involved.
 
On the surface, this promotion was clearly a way to boost attendance for WVU women's basketball, and today's activities resulted in the second-largest crowd ever for a Mountaineer women's game with this morning's announced turnout of 9,687. 
 
It's no different than last year's iBelong Day, which advocated diversity and inclusion during West Virginia's Big 12 matchup against third-ranked Baylor that resulted in more than 5,000 fans showing up.
 
By the way, that particular promotion won a gold medal at last year's National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA) convention for "Best Event Promotion." Once again, it was another creative way to generate interest and enthusiasm in West Virginia University athletics.
 
But beyond that, this morning's promotion helped bring more young people to our campus – people who one day may end up attending West Virginia University.
 
Odds are only a handful of the 7,500 elementary kids here this morning will be good enough to play sports at West Virginia University when they're old enough, but a good percentage of them WILL go to college – and now a lot more of them will consider WVU.
 
"It was an educational opportunity and hopefully some of these kids will go home and tell their parents (about West Virginia University)," Carey said.
 
I can remember many, many years ago when I was an elementary student growing up in the state's Northern Panhandle. It was during the late 1970s when West Virginia University was not the same West Virginia University we know today.
 
In the Ohio Valley, WVU stood a distant fifth on the pecking order of major schools behind Ohio State, Penn State, Pitt and Notre Dame. 
 
A lot of people back then frequently referred to Morgantown as "Morganhole." Had it not been for a neighbor who took my brother and me to WVU football and basketball games, my introduction to West Virginia University probably would have never happened.
 
But it did happen, and then Gale Catlett and Don Nehlen came along and soon everything at WVU changed – much the way things once changed at Penn State when a farm school in the middle of nowhere eventually transformed into a world-class university when Joe Paterno began winning all of those football games, or the way Florida State was put on the map when Bobby Bowden turned Seminole football into a household name.
 
Athletics can have that type of an impact on a university.
 
My wife, who works as a physical therapist at one of the area rehab hospitals, recently helped me understand this more clearly. 
 
One of her patients had suffered a serious stroke and was having a difficult time speaking. Traditional therapy methods were having little luck until she asked what school the afflicted person liked. 
 
Suddenly, out came the words "Let's go Mountaineers!" 
 
It's amazing how meaningful those words can be to the people of this state. 
 
Slater, knowingly or unknowingly, tapped into this with today's Education Day Promotion.
 
Now, a bunch of those little kids yelling "Let's go Mountaineers!" loud enough to make your fillings hurt will be yelling Let's go Mountaineers! for the rest of their lives.
 

Have you ever wondered what Country Roads sounds like when 8,000 elementary school students sing it? @WVUWBB @WVUSports pic.twitter.com/lw8wu70dId

— John Antonik (@JohnAntonik) November 15, 2018