March Madness brought a different kind of excitement to the American Airlines Center last Thursday, as third-graders from Mesquite ISD won the title in a reading competition.
The “Read to the Final Four” Competition is a literacy contest aimed at encouraging third-graders in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to read. Organized by the NCAA, Women’s Final Four, and the Dallas Local Organizing Committee, the competition has been held annually since 2016.
This year, the eight-week competition tracked how many minutes participants spent reading per day from January 23 to March 19. Students from the metroplex read a combined total of 5,669,850 minutes in their bid to win the grand prize of $5,000 worth of books for their school library.
The top four schools with the highest average number of minutes logged were invited to an awards ceremony at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on March 30.
This year’s finalists included Prestonwood Elementary from Richardson ISD, James Bowie Elementary and TG Terry Elementary from Dallas ISD, and Seaborn Elementary from Mesquite ISD, per NBC 5 DFW.
The prestigious title was ultimately awarded to students from Seaborn Elementary. Their cheers of excitement rang through the stadium.
“Honestly, it’s the greatest accomplishment I’ve ever got,” third-grader Ogooluwakitan Onifade told NBC 5. “My teacher has to stop me from reading books!”
Encouraging a love for books by playing to people’s drive to compete is the tactic at the heart of the “Read to the Final Four” program.
Victor Hill, the associate director of the NCAA’s office of inclusion, education, and community engagement, told NBC 5, “So many of the children, the teachers, the districts are so competitive. We thought it would be a great way to bring reading to the forefront.”
The effects of the program are widespread and long-lasting.
“Not only does it help get them motivated and engaged in their reading, I mean they’re very excited and they’re very competitive,” Seaborn Elementary Principal Renea Kern told NBC 5. “And really, when they get out of school and be leaders in their community.”
As an additional treat, the students had the opportunity to watch warm-ups for some of the Women’s NCAA Final Four teams, and they must have been thrilled.
The games were set to begin on the following day and featured a huge upset as Iowa beat South Carolina to play against LSU in the championship.
Ultimately, the LSU Tigers emerged victorious, as The Dallas Express recently reported.
