Chelsea Self / Post Independent
The table was set for Coal Ridge High School students to try to push senior basketball player Austin Gerber over the top in his semifinal fan-vote round for a chance to take part in the NCAA Final 4 preps 3-point shooting contest.
But just before a planned all-school assembly was set to start Thursday morning for both Coal Ridge and neighboring Riverside Middle School the amfam.com voting site apparently crashed, according to Gerber’s mother, Aimee Gerber.
The voting closed at 11 a.m. as scheduled without all those last-minute votes that had been planned, and Gerber was down by just 0.2 percentage points (50.1% to 49.9%) in his matchup with Colin Dougherty of Sherwood Christian out of Albany, Ga.
After the problem was pointed out to the organizers of the American Family Insurance #DreamFearlessly Fan Vote contest, they agreed to pause the voting instead of declaring a winner.
Voting will now resume between 9:30–11 a.m. (MDT, after this weekend’s time change back to Daylight Savings Time) on Monday. And Coal Ridge is getting the word out to drum up a final barrage of votes to send Gerber to the finals.
Gerber won the first two rounds of voting by margins of 65% and 55% in the contest to send an “under the radar” high school player to be part of the eight-contestant preps 3-point shooting competition during the college basketball finals weekend April 5 in Atlanta. The social-media campaign is being sponsored by American Family Insurance.
Gerber is a 47% 3-point shooter this year, and his Titans team qualified to play in the Class 3A regional round of the state playoffs this weekend, losing a tough one, 59-51 Friday night to DSST: Green Valley Ranch.
The #DreamFearlessly contest began with 16 of the top statistical 3-point shooters in the nation in a bracket-style competition. There’s a separate contest for girls’ 3-point shooters and for the boys slam dunk competition.
If Gerber makes it to the final round after voting resumes and closes again Monday morning, he would be matched against the winner of the other semifinal matchup between Greg Farrow of University School (Milwaukee) and Mitchell Carlos from Casa Grande Union High (Casa Grande, Ariz.).
Voting between the final two contestants is slated for March 6-13.