UW-Whitewater to hold parade for recent national champions, including wheelchair basketball players selected for Paralympics

WHITEWATER, Wis. — Beloit Memorial graduate Shelvin Garrett II will be among those celebrated by UW-Whitewater during a parade on Wednesday afternoon in Whitewater.

The parade will start at Perkins Stadium at 3 p.m. on Wednesday with other honorees besides Garrett including the Warhawks men’s wheelchair basketball team, track and field athlete Christian Patzka, and women’s gymnast Hayden Gough.

Garrett won the NCAA Division III indoor national championship in the triple jump on March 9 with a mark of 15.97 meters. The distance broke the UW-Whitewater program record.

Patzka won the 5,000-meter run in the Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships on March 8 in a time of 13:59.92, beating out his closest competitor by just 0.4 seconds.

Gough took first on the parallel uneven bars at the National Collegiate Gymnastics Association Championship on March 23. She scored a 9.85, the second best score on the apparatus in program history.

Whitewater’s men’s wheelchair basketball squad beat Arizona 74-67 on March 16 in Marshall, Minnesota, for the program’s 14th national championship. Three members of the current Warhawks team were selected to represent the United States in the Summer Paralympics to be held in Paris later this year: head coach Jake Williams, Talen Jourdan and A.J. Fitzpatrick. Two other former Warhawks, John Boie of Milton and Jeromie Meyer, also made the 2024 Paralympic team.