Coach Bill Bradley of the Ashland Kittens.
Pete Fraley, coach of Boyd County’s girls basketball team.
SUMMIT – Bill Bradley and Pete Fraley, two of the state’s top girls high school basketball coaches, have done a lot in their careers.
They have won district and regional championships, led teams into the Sweet Sixteen tournament and helped girls in the 16th Region earn a strong measure of success statewide.
Many of their players have gone on to earn college scholarships.
But Jan. 24 at Boyd County Middle School, the coaches for Boyd County (Fraley) and Ashland (Bradley) will be doing something new: coaching in their bare feet.
Fraley and Bradley are doing the barefoot coaching in support of the Amy For Africa/Samaritan’s Feet shoe campaign. AFA will be putting 26,000 pairs of shoes on children in Moyo, Uganda in May.
Samaritan’s Feet has already purchased the shoes – Skecher’s crocs – and they are on the way to Moyo. Shipping costs only $2 per pair of shoes so Amy For Africa is trying to raise $52,000.
The shoe campaign started on Dec. 17 and already the organization has raised almost $26,000.
Fraley is familiar with the program, having worked with Samaritan’s Feet board members Bernie and Marilyn Mason a few years ago for a shoe project in Wolfe County with Coach John Calipari, a strong supporter of the program. Fraley, who was joined by his wife Sunny and daughter Logan, said it was a “humbling experience” to put the shoes on children who have so little.
In Moyo, the shoes that will be going on the feet of those children are the first they will have ever owned in most instances.
Not only will Fraley and Bradley being coached barefooted but their coaching staffs are also going to join them.
Amy Compston, the marathon runner behind the AFA mission, will be speaking to both the Boyd County girls team and Ashland girls team early next week to share her story and why the shoes are so important to these Moyo children.
The game between 16th Region girls powerhouses tips off at 7:30 p.m.