The Moorestown Home & School Association will host its basketball game against the Harlem Wizards on Friday, Oct. 13, for the first time since March of 2019.
The event will take place at the MAC (Moorestown High School Athletic Center) against the township’s teachers and staff. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the game starts at 7. Nicole Dancy, president of the association, looks forward to seeing the community come together to volunteer and to see the game, among other things.
“This is just going to be a different aspect I think, because it’s mainly geared towards our kids,” she explained. “ … This will be, really, the first big event that we’ve all come together (for) pre-pandemic. So I think that’s the other excitement for … when I literally say, It’s the hottest ticket in town, it’s the hottest ticket in town.”
The Wizards held assemblies for the district’s students last month to get them excited for the big night. Dancy met with someone who works for the team, and that experience impacted her.
“He got me excited just as much as the kids were excited, so I am looking forward to this event,” she said. “I’ve heard rave reviews about it, and I’ve done my own research as far as the history of the Wizards and how it all came about … Just the excitement that was at each and every assembly a few weeks ago.”
Dancy and her family moved to the township during COVID, and she soon became involved with the association. She went on to become treasurer, and is now president of the nonprofit. According to its website, the group’s purpose is to encourage and facilitate a cooperative spirit among parents, staff, administrators, students and the community to support, strengthen and enrich the education experiences of students in the district.
Something that helped Dancy take on the role of president was the association’s team of volunteer parents and board of trustees.
“It’s such a strong group of people working together, and being in meetings with these individuals you would think we were in a corporate meeting,” she noted, “because that’s everybody’s attitude, that’s everybody’s mindset. And it definitely has been an asset that all of us has some type of background that we could lend our time and talent to this organization.”
The Harlem Wizards, founded by Howie Davis, have toured nearly all the 50 states and countries such as China, Italy, Brazil and Poland, entertaining crowds as large as 10,000-plus. The team’s primary focus is to hold fundraising events for nonprofits and school organizations throughout the U.S. Aside from Moorestown Home & School, Dancy is proud of her community and what it does for its students.
“I’m a firm believer of, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ so everybody, whether it’s parts of Home & School, the teachers, the parents – it takes all of us to actually build a child,” she said. “I’m just grateful that I live in a community that’s very strong on giving back, giving up their time and as well as their finances, to better the educational experience and enrichment for the children.”
For more information on the Harlem Wizards basketball game or the Moorestown Home & School Association, visit https://www.moorestownhsa.org.
