110,000 Pairs of Shoes for Needy

Jan. 25, 2008— -- Ron Hunter is IUPUI's all-time winning coach with 221 victories. But that's not what accounted for the excitement at this week's game against Oakland. Hunter partnered with an organization called Samaritan's Feet to collect more than 40,000 pairs of shoes for needy children.

Click here to contribute to Samaritan's Feet.

Four years ago, Hunter was on a recruiting trip to Lagos, Nigeria, and what he saw broke his heart.

"I was absolutely amazed by the number of people that lived in poverty, the number of people that lived on the streets. The number of children that had no shoes — and I'll be honest with you, they looked like they had no hope," recalled Hunter.

The coach is now on a mission to help brings those kids hope — and shoes.

"I got a phone call late one night," he recalled. "Usually, nobody calls me at home, they call me on my cell phone. It was an 11 o'clock call. A friend of mine I hadn't talked to in about three or four years called me and said he was with a group called Samaritan's Feet, and they needed to do something to bring awareness to what they were trying to do."

His friend asked him about coaching a game barefoot.

"I gave them a long pause, and I wasn't sure they were serious. I thought they had too many cocktails that night, because they were in New York City when they called me," Hunter said.

But Hunter accepted the challenge, and promised to coach a game in his bare feet. And then he set an improbable goal.

"I was trying to raise 40,000 [pairs of] shoes, to be honest with you, because of ... the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, who I am a great admirer of," said Hunter. He added that he doesn't believe he'd be the head coach of a Division I basketball team, if it weren't for King.