{"id":7307,"date":"2026-02-05T08:25:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T14:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/?p=7307"},"modified":"2026-02-05T08:25:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T14:25:17","slug":"pack-the-stands-event-raises-2000-for-local-elementary-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/?p=7307","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Pack the Stands&#8217; Event Raises $2,000 for Local Elementary School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border-radius: 12px;\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/50hu44cmww9ZRUxjpDt07V?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-testid=\"embed-iframe\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On a cold Saturday afternoon in January, several hundred basketball fans walked through the doorways of Geiseman Gymnasium as CUC held its inaugural &#8220;Pack the Stands&#8221; event. The doubleheader on Jan. 17 had two goals: to break the record for most people at a CUC basketball game and to raise money for Immanuel Christian Academy, a private school in nearby Hillside.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the school did not manage to break the standing record of 726 attendees during the doubleheader against Lakeland University, the<\/span>\u00a0event did pull in $2,000 to fund a new playground for the K-8 school.<\/p>\n<p>The even<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t was the brainchild of senior Jacob Garrison, who came up with the idea to replace the Concordia Invitational Tournament. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The CIT was an annual tournament between CUC, Concordia Wisconsin, Concordia Ann Arbor, and Concordia Nebraska that had been held since 1953. The tournament was put on hiatus after the 2025 event, when CUAA closed their athletics programs and CUW pulled out of all future CIT events. Prior to going on hiatus, <\/span>CIT was scheduled to be held at CUC in 2026.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe don\u2019t have a big school event that\u2019s happening,\u201d said Garrison. \u201cI thought, \u2018Let\u2019s have an event we can make feel like the CIT.\u2019 It\u2019s a great environment for students.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Garrison said planning for the event began in October. Organizers chose Jan. 17 because CUC men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s basketball were scheduled to play an in-conference doubleheader. In addition, there were no other sports scheduled that day, and the date fell around the time that the CIT would have been held.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once the date was picked, it became a process of deciding what other festivities the school would host alongside the event.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cA lot of it was working with the Big Six, SGA, and Spiritual Life,\u201d said Garrison. \u201cI really wanted to focus on Spiritual Life, as church and athletics are the two biggest parts of the university, so we should be collaborating together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ICA was chosen by Joel Watts, a graduate assistant for CUC vice president for strategic operations Jamie Kowalczyk. Watts said he learned about the school from Kowalczyk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAround winter break was when we decided to have the event be focused on raising money for ICA,\u201d said Watts. \u201cThat\u2019s when we visited the school and spent time with the students and Principal Carnita Nash.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An early plan involved having CUC student volunteers to repair the playground set, Garrison said, but university risk management told them not to touch it. As a result, Garrison instead shifted gears towards helping the school get funding for a new playground.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe decided to raise money to raise awareness and support for ICA,\u201d said Garrison. \u201cWe had donations and QR codes for donations at the games, and all money from the giving minute (where CUC student workers have 60 seconds to go into the stands to collect donations from crowd members) went towards ICA. The Northern Illinois District of the Missouri Synod also said that they would match all donations up to $1,000.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As planning for the event went on, it was decided that a major part of it would be bringing ICA students to Concordia. Junior Rachel Livesay, the co-coordinator of Concordia Youth Ministry, helped to facilitate the day of the event.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cSpiritual Life was there to help with the Christian side of things,\u201d said Livesay. \u201cIt was huge to show the kids that God loves them outside school and church, and that they can use their talents and abilities to further the kingdom of God.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The original plan was for CUC students to partake in a game of layup tic tac toe at halftime for the women\u2019s game and then for ICA students to play a scrimmage during halftime of the men\u2019s game. Technical difficulties earlier in the women\u2019s halftime show meant the tic tac toe game was moved to the men\u2019s halftime, extending halftime by a few minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By the end of the double-header, which saw the women\u2019s team dominate Lakeland 83-66 and the men\u2019s team pull off a close 70-67 win, CUC had raised $1,000 for ICA. Combined with the matching from the LCMS, that meant the school raised $2,000 to start building a new playground for ICA.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Nash said over email that, including the money raised from the &#8220;Pack the Stands&#8221; event, ICA has so far raised over $5,000 for a new playground, out of an estimated total cost of $18,000. Nash said that the $2,000 raised from CUC is an important contribution towards ICA&#8217;s overall goal.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Watts said that while there isn\u2019t an exact timetable for when ground would be broken, he has a meeting scheduled with Kowalczyk soon to discuss the next steps.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The event did fall short of breaking the all-time attendance record of 726, which was set when CUC hosted Edgewood University for a men\u2019s conference tournament game on February 23, 2022. The women\u2019s game saw a crowd of 378 fans, while the men\u2019s game had 550.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even though the record wasn\u2019t broken, Watts was still happy with the way the event turned out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cConsidering it was the first time holding it, I am very pleased,\u201d said Watts. \u201cWe are setting the foundation for something that can grow for years to come.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ultimately, the organizers were happy about the opportunity to raise money for ICA and show the students CUC.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Garrison has a field day for local middle schoolers planned for March 21, where the students will be able to play with CUC athletes and hang out with their friends. The ICA basketball team will also be visiting CUC again on Feb. 11, when the Concordia women\u2019s team takes on Edgewood University.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI wanted to leave behind something that was bigger than myself,\u201d said Garrison. \u201cHelping each other out in the community is what I strive for, and we were able to build a playground that kids can use. It\u2019s bigger than what any one person can do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a cold Saturday afternoon in January, several hundred basketball fans walked through the doorways of Geiseman Gymnasium as CUC held its inaugural &#8220;Pack the Stands&#8221; event. The doubleheader on Jan. 17 had two goals: to break the record for most people at a CUC basketball game and to raise money for Immanuel Christian Academy, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":7295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-showcase","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spectator.cuchicago.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}