Reading with the Jazz

On Thursday, March 31st, the Utah Jazz, Scholastic Books Fairs, Crossroads Plaza, ZCMI Center Mall and Russell’s Ice Cream proved that it pays to read.  As part of the Jazz’s annual reading program “Be a Team Player – Read!” the Utah Jazz rewarded each of the winning schools with a player visit.  The players went to the schools to talk to kids about the importance of reading, to read a few stories and to leave them some ice cream to have as a treat for their commitment to reading.

 “Reading is a great hobby.  It takes me any place I want to go...even to the past or to the future.   I love the Harry Potter Series it take me some place unusual without leaving my chair,” said Jazz guard Gordan Giricek.

 Winners were determined by the amount of minutes read out of school per student during the months of February and March, with the top fourteen schools receiving a visit from a Jazz player. This year 85 schools participated, with nearly 50,000 students reading an impressive 25.7 million minutes. The top school this year was Grant Elementary in Murray, where 382 students read for 762,945 minutes; an average of 1,997 minutes per student.  All schools also received a life-size Andrei Kirilenko poster chart for keeping track of their minutes read, autographed books and tickets to Jazz games.

The top 14 schools were Grant Elementary, McMillan Elementary, Pony Express Elementary, Parkside Elementary, Viewmont Elementary, Liberty Elementary, MarLon Hills Elementary, Alpine Elementary, Butler Elementary, Riverton Elementary, Adams Elementary, Snow Springs Elementary, Altara Elementary and Meridian Elementary.

“We’d like to thank all who participated in this year’s program, and, keep reading,” said Jazz President Dennis Haslam.