Racers visit Pearl Harbor Memorial
MBB: The team honored those who were lost on the infamous day in 1941
The Murray State men’s basketball team took a trip on Friday afternoon to visit the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Honolulu.
After touring the grounds, the team took in a short documentary about Pearl Harbor which helped provide context to what they would be seeing when they visited the Memorial and the site of the USS Arizona. The Arizona was severely damaged during the attack, as nearly 1,200 officers and crewmen died. The Arizona still lies at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, and the Memorial is built above the ship’s remains.
While Murray State will be playing three basketball games in Honolulu starting on Sunday, Racer Head Coach Steve Prohm believed visiting the Memorial was an important trip for his team while in Hawai’i.
“It's invest eternally, right?” Prohm said, referring to one of the four foundational pillars of his program. “That goes backwards and forwards. We need to know why we're investing in each other; what makes our country so special; the sacrifices different people have made for us to be able to play basketball; and to be able to represent Murray State in the great tournament like we're in this week. It's our job to mentor these kids socially, spiritually, academically and athletically. This is cultural history, a social event that we need to make sure these guys got a chance to educate themselves, and even us as coaches, to learn more. So many people have paved the way in so many different walks of life. The basketball side of it, people have the life side, the history side for the opportunities we have. So many people have sacrificed, and so I want these guys to learn about this stuff. To be able to be well-rounded and understand why we have the blessings we do.”
The Racers will return to practice again on Saturday as they prepare to open the Diamond Head Classic on Sunday against Nebraska. That game will be played at 8:00pm CST on ESPN.
Bigger than basketball.