THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23. 2007
NEWS
3A
BASKETBALL
Push, push. dribble, REPEAT
Wheelhawks player undiscouraged
BY BRIAN LEWIS-JONES
It's early 1995 in Tescott, Kan. larvis Sturn takes a late-night nap in the passenger seat of his buddy's car. The driver, drunk, dozes off and crashes into a culvert. Sturn is thrown into the road. His back snaps.
Now Stirn, a Lawrence resident is jovial. His one-year-old daughter, sitting on mother Marcha's lap, munches crackers. Stirn doesn't have feeling below his waist and uses a wheelchair, but is uninhibited by it. This weekend, he'll be playing basketball with friends.
"I had a few hard times. Eventually, I said I'm going to take it as it comes at me and do the best with it," he said.
Clean-shaven, 32 years old with the neck and arms of a linebacker. Stirn plays point guard and is team representative for the Kansas Wheelhawks, a wheelchair ball team that attracts players ages 14 to 56, from Manhattan to Spring Hill.
"It builds a bond with other people with similar injuries to yourself" Stirn said. This is his ninth season on the team.
Ablehawks, a campus advocacy group that helps fellow students with disabilities, will sponsor Saturday's wheelchair basketball game. The game will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Student Recreation and Fitness Center.
Stirn played basketball recreationally in his hometown of Tescott, which has a population less than 400 people. After the car accident, Stirn had scant interest in playing the game in a wheelchair. However, after his first night back on the court, he fell in love with
it again.
He began attending practice, eventually buying a custom basketball wheelchair, which cost $2,000 to $3,000, he said.
Push, push, dribble, repeat. The coordination took some time to master.
Katey Birge, Denver, Colo,
senior and president of AbleHawks,
said the game would help raise awareness of students with disabilities.
More than 3,000 students at the University have disabilities ranging from dyslexia to mobility impairments, she said, but the Lawrence campus' hilly terrain was discouraging for disabled prospective students.
"Many students who use a wheelchair don't come to KU." Birge said.
Melissa Manning, associate director of Disability Resources, said a long-standing stigma worked against those with physical disabilities.
"There is a well-meant but mistaken tendency to pity these folks and do things for them that they can do themselves," she said.
Stirn said some people in wheelchairs felt like they needed to do things by themselves to have a sense of control, but courtesy from others never bothered him. If somebody offers to open a door for Stirn, he doesn't mind.
"It's one less time you have to open a door;" he said.
Kansan staff writer Brian Lewis-Jones can be contacted at bljones@kansan.com.
- Edited by Trevan Mcgee
PROMOTIONS
High scores hurt businesses Lawrence stores lose money, gain customers following big wins
BY MEGAN HIRT
When the University of Kansas men's basketball team tips off against Iowa State on Saturday, most Jyahawk fans will be hoping for a blowout. But big wins come with a big price for some businesses.
"We lose money," said Jamie Bossert, owner of Jersey Mike's Subs in Lawrence. "Lawrence basically get a free sandwich."
Jersey Mike's recently began a promotion that lets customers take ten cents off the price of any sub for each point the Jayhawks score over 50 at Allen Fieldhouse.
The promotion began at the Kansas vs. Colorado match on Jan. 27, in which the Jayhawks scored 97 points.
"I didn't realize how many points KU could score," Bossert said. "It made me nervous."
$4.70 if they showed a KUID or ticket stub from the game. Bossert said regular sandwiches range from $4.95 to $6.25.
With the final score of 97-74,
customers received a discount of
Though costly in the short term, offers like Jersey Mike's give a boost to sales by
"It's a win for them," said Denise Linville, journalism lecturer who specializes in marketing. "It creates buzz and gets people talking about their brand. They're hoping to have some type of association with the excitement and fun of KU basketball."
gaining fans' good will and getting them talking.
Linville said she believed discounts like Jersey Mike's were more effective at getting people into a store than running a print ad or buying ad space inside Allen Fieldhouse. She referred to Jersey Mike's discounted sandwiches as a loss leader; although the business lost money on sandwiches, it gained complementary sales like chips and drinks.
its sixth day.
"I didn't realize how many points KU could score. It made me nervous."
Jersey Mike's discount lasted for one week, and Bossert said it brought in more business than usual. About 80 customers used the discount by
JAMIE BOSSERT Jersey Mike's Subs owner
"There's a psychological principle there," Limville said. "A lot of people don't feel right just getting something for free."
Ashley Durkee, Manhattan junior, had never been to Jersey Mike's, but went after hearing about the promotion from a friend. She bought chips and a drink with her discounted sandwich after paying less than $1 for the sub.
"I felt guilty," Durkee said, "especially because I didn't even have to go to the game to get the discount."
Linville said that a promotion like lersey Mike's puts the company
in a favorable light in customers' minds, which will likely increase future sales.
the glass" promotion at men's basketball games brings in future sales. If the team snatches 40 rebounds during a home game, fans receive a free gallon of wiper fluid at Advanced Auto Parts by showing a KUID or ticket stub from the game.
"People come in and just get the wiper fluid, but then come back when they need something else," Hupp said.
The "Clean the Glass" promotion has made Advance Auto Parts a well-known presence in Lawrence. Hupp said that wiper fluid regularly
costs 98 cents a gallon. About 50 to 75 people come in for wiper fluid per game, while word of the promotion reaches more than 16,000 people in Allen Fieldhouse.
Jamie Woods, sports marketing manager for Advance Auto Parts;
said the company did its "Clean the Glass" promotion for six other college basketball teams, and did similar promotions for college football, minor league baseball and minor league hockey teams.
"I felt guilty, especially because I didn't even have to go to the game to get the discount."
Sports fans are an especially loyal market according to Max Utsler, associate professor of journalism who teaches "Sports, Media and Society." Initially losing money by offering a discount can end up being advantageous for businesses if in return they gain sports fans' loyalty.
"It's a very popular thing to do at sporting events," Utsler said. "You're not going to see a promotion like this for who's voted into the House of Representatives."
Utsler said the Kansas City Royals' Krispy Kreme "Dozen for a Dozen" promotion is an example of effective sports marketing.
and a giant pulsing doughnut would appear on the JumboTron each time a batter stepped up to the plate. The Kansas City Star ran a photo of fans cashing in their ticket stubs for doughnuts on an August 2003 front page.
ASHLEY DURKEE Manhattan junior
"I thought it was one of the smartest things to do," he said. "They should've done it at every ballpark in the country"
Fans would begin chanting for doughnuts after the eleventh hit.
For four seasons, whenever the Royals batted 12 hits on their home field, fans could redeem their ticket stub for a dozen Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts. The Royals reached the 12-hit mark during 80 home games throughout the four years, which Utsler said is about as often as most other major league baseball teams.
"Once it got rolling, it gained a kind of pop culture attraction," Utsler said.
"You can't buy coverage like that." Utsler said.
Despite the heavy exposure, Royals president Dan Glass announced Jan. 19 that the promotion would not continue for
the 2007 season.
"It completely baffled me." Utsler said: "I think the Royals were surprised, too."
If the promotion was hurting Krispy Kreme financially, Utsler said the solution would have been to restrict the times and the locations where fans could collect the doughnuts, or to raise the number of hits required for the promotion to take effect.
Bossert of Jersey Mike's used this strategy. Instead of 40 points, the discount now begins after the Jayhawks score 60. Instead of a one-week promotion, the discount is now good for two days.
The promotion has become more popular despite the new stipulations. In the two days following the Jayhawks' win against Kansas State on Feb. 7 — once again with a score of 97 — Bossert said about 100 customers used the $3.70 discount, more than triple the number of customers per day from the first discount.
"I knew the high score was a good thing because we were going to have a lot of people in here," Bossert said. "And we believe that if someone tries our food, they'll come back."
Edited by Kelly Lanigan