Read to Achieve Month Gets Underway

The FastBreak Foundation's Read to Achieve month got underway Monday afternoon at Target Center with a Reading Time-Out featuring Wolves player Mark Madsen and Wolves broadcasting partner Alfonso Fernandez of La Mera Buena.

Along with the FastBreak Foundation, Read to Achieve month is presented by American Family Insurance and KARE 11, while the Latino Outreach presenting sponsor is Hennepin County Medical Center. Events will continue throughout the month of March.

To kick things off on Monday, Madsen and Fernandez read "The Three Little Javelinas" (The Three Little Pigs) aloud to first and second graders from Academia Cesar Chavez School in St. Paul.

Madsen, who admits his Spanish has gotten a little rusty after his mission trip to Spain after high school, was excited to be able to spend some time with the kids and exercise his Spanish speaking abilities.

"Things went great today," said Madsen. "It's always great to get out and share the game of basketball a little bit with the kids."

Year after year, Madsen has always been one of the more active Timberwolves players in the community and the chance to spend some time with a predominantly Latino population made this opportunity even greater for him.

"It was really great to see the Latino community out here today," Madsen explained. "When I was out in Los Angeles, the Latino community made up such a huge percentage of the families and I think we're trying to build that up and really reach out and embrace the wonderful Latino communities here in the Twin Cities."

After the reading, the group of kids was split into two and sent to each end of the court to do some shooting. Madsen worked at one end of the court, while Youth Basketball Coordinator Todd Landrum worked with the other group. Not many shots went through the hoop, but the kids had a blast nonetheless.

"It was a really great experience for our kids to be involved with, especially because they look up to the players like Mark Madsen as role models, " said Rudy Avina, a teacher at Academia Cesar Chavez.

After the shootaround with Madsen and Landrum, the kids received backpacks, books, team yearbooks and a high-five from the Mad Dog and they got their coats on got ready to leave. Among the books given out were "Will and Squill" and "Sam Bennett's New Shoes."

"The kids don't get many opportunities to come out of the inner city to a place like Target Center, and they really enjoyed having Madsen here speaking Spanish," concluded Avina.

"That's a really big thing for them."