The University of Arkansas Fort Smith Lions men's basketball team home opener is Tuesday night against the University of the Ozarks, and there will be an early technical foul whistled against the Lions after the first UAFS score Tuesday night, fans are going to shower the court with soft toys and stuffed animals. The Toy Toss game provides thousands of toys that will be donated to the Salvation Army of Fort Smith and the Fort Smith Boys and Girls Club.
Head coach Zane Gibson says it's a unique moment in college sports.
Zane Gibson: The easiest way to kind of describe it is total chaos for about four minutes. Basically,each year we designate one of our home games, typically earlier, uh, always before Christmas, but earlier in our season where we designate as our toy toss game. Roundabouts is we bring we invite everybody to bring a soft toy to the game. We don't want to throw out, uh, Legos or something like that. That could that could hurt me possibly. You're definitely hurting officials because they'll just fall over for anything.
After our first basket that we make, um, all of the, uh, fans and attendants are advised to throw the toys, like, literally throw them onto the floor. That is so against everything else. I mean, Texas Tech gets in trouble for tossing their tortillas, and. But we actually encourage the toys to be thrown onto the floor.
Uh, we actually do receive a technical foul, but ninety nine percent of the time, we, uh, inform our opponents and so they understand what's going to occur, and they waive the technical. And then, uh, our cheer, our pom um, some other volunteers that come to the game quickly, uh, clean the floor as fast as humanly possible, and then a real game breaks out.
But, um, those four minutes are maybe the most impactful four minutes that my program has, uh, on the River Valley. We typically raise closer to two thousand, uh, toys per year. And those are distributed, uh, inside the river valley to, uh, young kids that maybe don't have as much around Christmas that we'd like them to have. And that's kind of my only one rule about the whole deal is we're organizing where we're going to distribute it.
That is this game, this university, our team is here to help and support our community. And so we make sure that those toys stay inside of our river valley.
Kyle Kellams: What does it sound like? As soon as that bucket's made, is there cheering or?
Gibson: It's like a cheer. And then I was like, everybody goes, oh crap, we gotta throw the toys. You know, they almost forget it's a basket. They're watching a game. It feels like a game.
And then honestly everybody I think is just a little bit shy to be the first one because they're like, are we. Is this. We're about to because you can watch obviously we watch tape of all our games and as we're breaking down things, this is one night we kind of get a kick out of watch as a staff and as a team. Everybody's kind of looking at each other and they all kind of throw it and then just starts raining down at that moment.
So it's it's very unique. And I think even though we do it every year, I even think our crowd sometimes has to figure out, okay, now throw it and then they do it.
Kellams: Yeah, it just seems counterintuitive to actually throw something onto the court.
Gibson: Yeah, yeah. No. Because again, you're taught for don't throw things on the court. You know, don't you don't step across the line. Basically, you know, what happens inside those lines is what happens. And as a spectator you're, you're just taught from almost birth to just stay out of that.
But in this game, we invite you to get involved. I mean, we invite you to bring as many toys and as many friends as you can possibly bring to this thing. Uh, because it's bigger than basketball, you know, uh, and we try to really do a lot of things as a team inside our community. But, um, this game is truly bigger than basketball.
And, uh, and that's what our sell is to, to anybody that wants to attend is just to get involved with something that's bigger than maybe yourself.
Kellams: And, Zane, you mentioned that. You organize it. You orchestrate it. Do you, do you help distribute the soft toys as well?
Gibson: You know, when I was actually an assistant coach here with Coach Newman, I was in that phase a little bit more. Honestly, our administrative team was Rachel Dillon. Well, Chris Kelly, our partners, they have really taken that off my hands in a positive way. You know, it's a lot of work to distribute two thousand three. We hope ten thousand toys next Tuesday. Um, it is a lot of work to do that.
And, um, I really appreciate them for taking a little bit of that burden off where they handle most of the distributing, uh, and where we're going to partner with and who's going to get what and how many, um, you know, Boys and Girls Club, Ronald McDonald, wherever we, we send them. Um, they do such a great job with that.
It takes a lot of pressure off of, uh, you know me to do that, you know, because the season moves forward and, uh, and so it helps me a lot to, you know, kind of get back to that. Um, and they do a fantastic job distributing those outs.
Kellams; I want to ask you one question about the season, because you're in this great new conference that seems to just make so much sense for the Lions. You've got, you know, Tahlequah and Joplin. And do you like being in this new conference?
Gibson: Yeah, I love it. Um, now, I say that with the most, uh, passive aggressive tone that I can give you because our league is an absolute beast.
Kellams; Yeah.
Gibson: Uh, I'm four out of the last nine national champions have come from our league, so we didn't step into a league and go, yeah, this is great because this is going to be easier. Um, we stepped in the league for what I believe are all the right reasons that we used to be in leagues in college athletics, which is regional.
Uh, these universities are similar as far as their beliefs and their value systems. Um, you know, most of us, except for Newman, are state institutions. And, um, you know, the fact that our longest road trip is eight hours- I know that sounds like a long way- our average road trip in our last conference was eight hours.
So we only do that once every other year. Like, we don't go to Nebraska-kearney this year. So our longest road trip this year will be five hours. And as you mentioned, we have five teams inside of two and a half hours to us. And so the rivalries I mean, we already see it in our games and volleyball games and the and baseball games. I mean, not that we want this, Kyle, but we are seeing other colors outside of blue and white inside of our arenas because you have the ability to travel in this league. And, um, it's just it's such a competitive league. It's at the highest level in Division two. Um, and the regional rivalries, which I think we're going to benefit off of in our and I hope our fans grab Ahold of, uh, is just fantastic.
Kellams: All right. One last silly question. Do you have a favorite variety of soft toy? I'm a sucker for teddy bears.
Gibson: Well, I have two young ones. Uh, so I have a, I have a three year old, uh, and a one year old. And my three year old is really into soft toys. So I guess the hardest part for him will be to actually throw it, uh, on Tuesday night, uh, and not just want to take it back home.
But he's into right now. He's into elephants, uh, in like, zebras. Giraffes. I think he likes, like, the longer nose, longer necked, uh, toys. I don't know why, uh, I couldn't tell you, uh, but that's kind of. That's kind of his deal.
Um, I'm a big fan of any of them that just don't come and clonk me, because I do think some people absolutely try to take a shot, uh, during that game. Uh, the one time they can throw it at me, I think they, I think they try to. And I tell the officials just pregame, I think they try to throw it to them because they can never throw it at officials. And I think they try to have some fun with us.
But no, I'm just making sure that the purpose of the game and the people for the game, that's, that's the most important thing to me. Um, what exactly we're throwing on the floor, I hope, are some wonderful things that give some great Christmases in the river Valley.
Kellams: Have a great game Tuesday, have a great season. And thank you so much for your time.
Gibson: Kyle, thank you so much for yours.
Zane Gibson is head coach for the UAFS men's basketball team, the annual UAFS toy toss game Tuesday night, beginning at six in the Stubblefield Center on the campus. The women's season, by the way, begins tonight at home against Arkansas-Monticello and a reminder home basketball games for the Lions. Men's and women's teams can be heard on Fox Sports Radio 103.5FM in Fort Smith.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
