Kentucky gymnasts, from left, Jill Procasky, Delaynee Rodriguez. Creslyn Brose, Cadence Gormley, Isabella Magnelli, Kaila Lawrence and Sharon Lee hosted a back to school karaoke event Sunday. (Joni Fowler, Larry Vaught Photo)
Thanks to the W1974 Collective it was an entertaining Sunday for myself and former all-SEC running back Anthony White.
It started with UK volleyball All-American Emma Grome joining us on WLAP Sunday Morning Sports Talk to announce her NIL partnership with Lueberry Snacks, a healthy superfood snack with a variety of gluten-free bars with essential nutrients.
The snack bars not only are really tasty — yes, we had samples thanks to Grome and Tom North of Lueberry Snacks — but unlike other chocolate-type bars that are not nearly as prone to melting. I left two bars in my vehicle Sunday when the temperature was over 90 and there was no melting from either bar.
You can find the snacks at select Clark’s Pump-N-Shop in Lexington or at this website.
Grome told us she plans to use the bars for energy boosts and might even snack on one before a match.
However, 45 minutes on radio with Grome also included conversation about Tuesday’s season-opening match in Louisville against Nebraska on ESPN2 (you can listen to the podcast here).
After the radio show ended, White and I had a short break before heading to Night Kitty Karaoke Bar for two hours at the UK back to school NIL karaoke. A few weeks ago gymnasts Jill Procasky, Delaynee Rodriguez and Sharon Lee were on Sunday Morning Sports Talk with us to talk about their work with the Scott County Humane Society — there were also two dogs available for adoption at the Night Kitty Karaoke Bar event Sunday. That trio along with teammates Isabella Magnelli, Creslyn Brose Kaila Lawrence and Cadence Gormley, who has almost 30,000 Instagram followers,were at karaoke to interact with fans.
Let me just say that the gymnasts were incredible and Brose has a big-time stage presence and enjoyed singing by herself, with teammates and with audience members, including two UK international students.
The young girls who attended were obviously in awe of the gymnasts and thrilled to be singing, dancing and talking with them.
Joni Fowler of the W1974 NIL Collective — a pioneering initiative aimed at changing the landscape of women’s sports at the University of Kentucky through NIL — hopes to have more “fun” events like this to enable the female student-athletes to show their personalities in non-stressful activities and my guess is the gymnasts do another one during the season it would attract a huge crowd.
