Rufino Mendoza Elementary School Repeats as Reading Challenge Champs
by: Brian Feldt





See pictures from the event!





The Dallas Mavericks could benefit by taking a page out of the Rufino Mendoza Elementary playbook.

Rufino Mendoza, which won this year’s Mavs Reading Challenge, defended its title after also winning the Mavs Reading Challenge last year – the first back-to-back champion in the challenge’s history.

Students from Rufino Mendoza, a Fort Worth elementary school, combined to read more than 550,000 minutes as part of the Mavericks incentive program, which awards students for reading with prizes – in theory, students from Mendoza read for the same amount of time it would take to play 11,458 Mavs games.

For Rufino Mendoza’s efforts, the Mavs awarded the school with a special pep rally featuring Mavs guard Devin Harris and Mavs mascot Champ.

Harris spoke to the young crowd for a little more than a half hour about the importance of reading and staying in school – no doubt the kids at Mendoza already know the importance of reading.

The Reading Challenge, now in its ninth edition, represented the Mavs’ continuing effort to promote literacy in and around the entire Metroplex area. The contest was open to all second, third, fourth and fifth grade students, who were asked to read as many minutes as they could in a two-month time frame.

This year, more than 5,600 students participated in the event reading approximately 4.6 million minutes – nearly nine years worth of minutes.

Omer M. from River Trails Elementary in Forth Worth and Mandy K. form Jess Harben Elementary in Richardson were the top two readers out of the entire field. Omer read a total of 18,559 minutes while Mandy logged 16,207 minutes. The two students each received an authentic, autographed Mavs jersey.

Special thanks to Verizon Yellow Pages and GameWorks for their support of this program.