Six Year Old UK Fan gets Unique Chance to Meet Mark Pope

Sometimes being lucky and bold pays off like it did for 6-year-old Maddox Raikes of Sellersburg, Ind, on Friday.

His father, Hunter, is a life-long Kentucky fan who grew up in Marion County and attended UK before eventually moving to Sellersburg to be closer to his wife’s family. However, Raikes and his family have UK basketball and football season tickets and also regularly attend other UK sporting events.

Raikes, 33, met his wife, who is from New Albany, Ind., when they were working in Louisville. Her father is a “diehard” Hoosier but she now likes UK.

“I am not old enough to remember when Indiana mattered,” Raikes laughed and said. “Our son has been going to Kentucky games his whole life. He is a diehard. He knows no orange is allowed in the house.”

They went to coach Mark Pope’s introductory press conference at Rupp Arena and Maddox had been wanting to meet the new coach. Hunter saw on social media that the Kentucky coaching staff was flying into the Sellersburg airport Friday night after a recruiting trip and told his son.

“The airport is only five minutes from where we live. He immediately wanted to go see Pope,” Hunter said. “I looked it up on the flight tracker and it looked like they would be landing at about 6:30. We went and had tacos and got to the airport about 6:25.

“It’s a private airport and maybe they thought less fans would be there,” Hunter said. “We were the only ones crazy enough to be there. I was kind of worried we might get arrested or at least yelled at but my son was so excited there was no way we could leave.”

Maddox made a sign welcoming Pope and the two waited about 20 minutes for Pope to come out of the airport after the plane landed.

“He was about the nicest  human ever. I know they had a long flight (from Las Vegas) but my son waved and he walked across the parking lot to see us and asked him if he was a UK fan. He took a picture and did a fist bump. He was super, super nice.

“I met coach Cal back in the day but always kind of felt like I was bothering him. Pope took his time with us and I know it will be a memory my son will never forget thanks to what he did for us.”