It takes practice and lots of it, to do anything well, including reading.

That in a nutshell, is what the Fort Scott Community College Basketball Team told the students at  Eugene Ware Elementary during an award assembly Wednesday afternoon.

During the month of March, students have been competing with other classes in reading the most minutes.

The classroom winners of each grade level were given a poster of the FSCC Basketball Team along with a promised extra recess, during the assembly held in the school gym.

The winners were: Carrie Southwell’s 3rd grade class with 3, 220 minutes of reading, Joyce Flanner’s 4th grade with 3,002 minutes and Jill Couch’s 5th-grade class with 2,232 minutes.

During the assembly, students were randomly picked from the audience to participate in a basketball throw challenge.

The winner of that challenge was Quadar Moreland, a fourth-grade student. Because of his win, all 4th-grade students were given autographed posters of the team.

Brenda Hill, an instructional coach at Ware, and Mary Mauer, a teacher, collaborated on the idea of capitalizing on basketball’s March Madness national competition to encourage students to practice reading.

Below are photos of the afternoon assembly.