Friends of Wilbur & Wilma, a fan-driven and alumni-led supporter group for student-athletes at Arizona is planning a special event to coincide with the Wildcat football Spring Game on Saturday at Arizona Stadium.
Friends of Wilbur & Wilma is a Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) organization designed to welcome alumni, fans and businesses who want to engage and work with the student-athletes at Arizona.
The first 1,000 Zona Zoo students to attend the game at noon will receive a free Ice Shaker, a protein shaker bottle developed by the Gronkowski brothers — including Rob and his brother Chris, who both played at Arizona.
In addition to that, after the game, Friends of Wilbur & Wilma will stage an autograph session at Bear Down Field adjacent to the stadium with Tedy Bruschi and Lance Briggs (Arizona legends returning to coach the Red and Blue teams in the scrimmage) as well as 12 of the Arizona players.
The list of players coached by Jedd Fisch in his second year who will be signing autographs: Hunter Echols, Dorian Singer, Christian Rowland-Wallace, Jordan Morgan, Jayden de Laura, Jonah Coleman, Jacob Cowing, Kyon Barrs, Christian Young, Tetairoa McMillan, Jaxen Turner and Jerry Roberts.
Powering Friends Of Wilbur & Wilma is Blueprint Sports, which is led By co-founder and partner Francisco Aguilar, who is a former Arizona student body president from Tucson. The Blueprint Sports platform facilitates monthly community engagements for the members of the Arizona football team.
“Since we launched Friends of Wilbur & Wilma, in 60 days, we’ve raised $1.2 million for Arizona football so far,” said Joey Medina, a Tucsonan and Arizona graduate who is the organization’s general manager.
Medina also mentioned that as part of the group’s activities Arizona athletes have interacted with organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club of Southern Arizona, Big Brothers and Sisters and Habitat for Humanities.
The Gronkowskis have signed three Arizona athletes to NLI deals to promote their Ice Shaker — football players Ma’Jon Wright and Christian Young and softball player Janelle Meoño.
Medina mentioned that fans can order Ice Shakers that honor each of these athetes at the Ice Shaker Web site.
“We’ve ordered their shakers and three additional shakers that are near and dear to Coach Fisch’s heart,” Medina said. “One of them is ‘Desert Rising,’ which represents the entire team. The other is ‘Twenty-Tucson,’ which represents the No. 1 recruiting class (in the Pac-12) that we just did and ‘The Juice is Worth the Squeeze’ that is representative of the three players that play for us from (Anaheim, Calif.) Servite High School (Noah Fifita, Keyan Burnett and Tetairoa McMillan).”
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