Honda Team wins $3,000 for WSSU

The Winston-Salem State University Honda Team finished with a 2-3 record during the 2010 Honda Campus All-Star Challenge National Championship Tournament April 10-13 in Orlando.

The HCASC is the nation's largest academic competition between HBCUs. 

The team competed in the Round Robin Division I and the Maggie Walker Division along with Paine College, Chicago State, Morgan State, and Delaware State.

The team received a trophy for being a tournament qualifier, and the University was awarded $3,000 for participating in the competition. 

This year, the HCASC consisted of 48 teams instead of 64 teams of more than 250 students from across the country.

"This year it was more difficult to make nationals because of the change in the number of teams competing," said Marilyn Roseboro, the Honda Team coach for 15 years.  Roseboro is also a associate professor in the mass communications department.

The WSSU Honda team has participated in the tournament for 17 years and participated in a campus tournament to qualify for the national tournament.

The "Great 48" schools were divided into eight divisions and competed in a modified Round Robin format with six schools per division. The six teams played each other in five matches.

Prairie View A&M won the tournament.

WSSU's team practiced on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays during the fall and spring semester. 

Candace Kelly, an interdisciplinary studies major from Wilmington, said that Honda practices were not difficult because she used the information she learned in her classes to help her answer the questions.

Terrence Hobbs, a mass communications major from Charlotte, participated in his first year, and looks forward to assisting Honda in the future.

"I am graduating in December [2010], but I will absolutely come back to help the team," Hobbs said.

The WSSU Honda team consisted of three new members: Stephen Archie, a computer science major from Shelby, NC; Krista Brown, a sports management major from Winston-Salem and Hobbs.

The HCASC is one of Honda's largest and longest running philanthropic initiatives in the United States.