The first thing he could remember hearing during his free-throw contest was the announcer shouting “30 seconds left!” The roaring applause and cheering with each made shot didn’t even register, nor did the uproarious crowd in the stands appearing behind the see-through backboard. It was all pushed out of his consciousness.
The basket count reached 11, then a miss, then another one rimmed out… [pause, gather composure, take a breath, focus]… he put the final ball in the air with a perfect arch trajectory and backspin, took a confident step back, and: *Swish!*
An emphatic hug from mascot Rumble the Bison sealed it — Sam Mowery hit the max 12 free throws to pad his MBA scholarship.
“It felt right as soon as I put it up,” said Mowery, who ended his on-court celebration on the baseline holding a gigantic novelty check with the dollar amount written as “FULL RIDE SCHOLARSHIP.” Each made shot counted for an extra $1,500 to tack onto the automatic $10,000 scholarship for being selected.
“I was already thinking about getting my MBA for the last 10-plus years. I’d like to do all I can to help secure my family’s future,” Mowery, a Red Bull district sales manager and father of three, said. “What’s two years when you can change the next 15 for the better?”
Mowery entered the contest during a prior game, when fans could scan a QR code from their arena seats. After a random selection, he was invited back for a future game to take the free-throw challenge.
Mowery was the fourth contestant for the Thunder Leadership MBA scholarship challenge, a sweepstakes partnership between the OKC Thunder and the Meinders School of Business. He was the first one to hit the maximum shots.
Before entering, he’d already secured a commitment from his employer for a partial scholarship and was on the search for more when he got the call from the Thunder offices. They invited him to the April 9 game against the Sacramento Kings to participate in the free-throw challenge.
Even still, he wasn’t convinced he was actually going to be called down from the stands to the court. It didn’t help that he got that phone call on April Fools’ Day. He even Googled the names on the contest email chains to make sure they were real people.
It wasn’t until he had a conversation with the Thunder contest rep right before gametime when he realized it was all for real.
“I hadn’t prepared at all because I didn’t think it was really going to happen. Then I thought, ‘I should have asked more questions.’ I didn’t know how the shooting contest worked,” he said.
After a brief rundown, Mowery started strategizing. Once he made it onto the court during the first timeout of the third quarter, instinct kicked in.
Even though he didn’t specifically practice free-throw shooting for the contest, Mowery is no basketball rookie. He played through middle school and high school at Classen SAS and still plays pickup games on occasion. In fact, he was set to go to Phoenix to play in a Red Bull employee three-on-three tournament. On a hot streak he shares with the playoff-bound Thunder, Mowery’s team won their south bracket to advance to the finals of that tournament.
At the Thunder game, Mowery says his phone died at the arena while they were waiting for the contest to start. After the game, by the time he plugged it in, “I had over 300 messages! Plus tons of Facebook comments.
“I couldn’t catch a bigger wave right now,” he said.
