Former 76ers basketball player and NBA Hall of Famer World B. Free addressed an audience of Penn students and alumni at the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity's annual Balanced Man Scholarship ceremony on Thursday.
The ceremony, which was held at the Sheraton University City hotel, involved 37 freshman finalists and a handful of fraternity alumni joining the Sigma Phi Epsilon brothers in a banquet and awards presentation for the scholarship, which is coordinated by the fraternity's national network.
The fraternity honored all of the finalists, chosen through an application and interview process for their outstanding academic and athletic achievements in high school, and selected three prize money winners.
"We've held this event each year at the same time since 1992," College junior and Sigma Phi Epsilon President Jon Pomeroy said. "We always try to get a speaker from the local area."
And this year, Sigma Phi Epsilon was able to bring one of the all-time greatest basketball players in Philadelphia history.
Free's charisma and easygoing demeanor brought the audience to laughter a number of times as he told anecdotes about his life growing up in Brooklyn and his 13-year history in the NBA.
"When you look at the world today... you say to yourself, where are we going to get a leader," Free said. "You guys have a lot of things going for you, so it's important to take that a step further."
Free concluded his speech with a question-and-answer session that drew some basketball talk from Sigma Phi Epsilon's retired chef William "Jack" Shores, who has been with the fraternity for 39 years.
Free said that when his public relations staff told him the slot was available, he was immediately interested in coming to Penn.
"Once he said to come on down here, I realized it was something positive," Free said. "Anything positive, the 76ers organization is going to be involved with that."
"When you have a group such as a fraternity, it's something very big... they can get out to a lot of people," Free said.
"Once you spread good news around, that good news starts to feel like a snowball, rolling downhill, and it starts to be a mountain after awhile."
College sophomore Greg Robinson, a Sigma Phi Epsilon brother, was instrumental in getting Free to come to Penn.
"I contacted someone at Comcast who put me in contact with the director of public relations of the 76ers," Robinson said. "I told him about our Balanced Man program and we got contacted by World's representative, and it went from there."
Overall, most of the brothers were impressed with Free's speech.
"I thought it went really well, he was a good speaker," College sophomore Alan Blank said. "He was very energetic... and I enjoyed the question period."
Wharton freshman Joshua Sandberg, who received the top prize of $1,000 in the Balanced Man Scholarship competition, agreed.
"This banquet was really impressive," Sandberg said. "I had never heard of World B. Free before, but he was great... this whole scholarship experience I really liked."
