By NICK HENTHORN

Sports Editor

WHEELING — Deadly flooding in Ohio County has hung a dark cloud over the Wheeling area– and as local communities seek to push forward and rebuild, Wheeling Park, Wheeling Central Catholic, and Martins Ferry’s basketball programs are set to come together in pursuit of that good cause.

On June 25, at 6:30 p.m., on Coach Skip Prosser Court inside the Central Catholic Athletic Center, the Wheeling Central and Wheeling Park boys basketball teams will have a scrimmage open to the public. Admission is free, and monetary donations will be taken, with all proceeds going to the Triadelphia and Valley Grove Volunteer Fire Departments.

The game will be preceded by Wheeling Central and Martins Ferry’s girls basketball teams scrimmaging at 5 p.m.

The game between Patriots and Maroon Knights was something that both teams already had lined up when the two programs saw an opportunity to do good.

“We’d had the scrimmage on the schedule for a while now, it wasn’t just because of the recent flooding,” Wheeling Central assistant coach Tyler Morando, who is helping to organize the event, said. “We just thought, with everything going on, and with this game being played– we haven’t really played Wheeling Park at Central or in any type of basketball format, other than some summer league games, for a while.”

“We scheduled this scrimmage with Wheeling Central back in April,” Wheeling Park head coach Michael Jebbia said. “Then, obviously, the floods and the tragedies unfolded this week. We just started to think a little bit– I had a couple local referees call, talked to the Wheeling Central coaching staff, and a lot of our basketball stuff ends next week. So, we thought since we have this scheduled, maybe we can take donations, maybe we can make this a community event.”

In recent years, the two teams have scrimmaged multiple times in summer league play, but seized the opportunity to turn this year’s meetup into something more.

“Our family lives in Triadelphia, and we’re up on a hill so we did not get the brunt of the damage,” Jebbia said. “But having to drive through and see everything– a couple of our players were affected, living in Triadelphia, Valley Grove. You just try and find something that you can do to help. Nothing’s going to erase the bad memories that happened this week, but if we can do a small part and help out with a simple basketball game, that’s the right thing to do. Although Park and Central have not played in all sports for a time, we have a lot of respect for them. They have the best player in the state of West Virginia.”

“Coach Jebbia was great, he was appreciative to be able to help and was totally in agreement with the idea,” Morando said. “That’s the main thing here, the basketball kind of takes a second seat and get as many Wheeling people in there as we can and donate as much money as we can to first responders.”

Both coaches said they were expecting a large crowd, not only because of the charitable endeavor that the game is aiming towards, but because many in the area have not seen Wheeling Park and Wheeling Central play since their last regular-season outing against one another back in January of 2013.

“We thought, with the two teams coming together and with everything going on, it made a lot of sense to get as many people in our gym as we could and donate all the money,” Morando said. “I know the OVAC referees are donating their time and giving their officials’ fee back to the first responders too.”

“A lot of people had a hand in the idea. I’m just the one delegating, getting people together and trying to make this the best atmosphere that we can with the main goal of raising as much money as we can for our first responders.”