Current Release: April 28th, 2009 | Vol. XXX Iss. 10

Brown spins to win

By Melissa Fowler

mjfowler@vwc.edu

The odds of getting on a game show are very small, but then to actually win one seems even more impossible. For senior, Brittaney Brown, the impossible happened when she went on a softball trip to California and landed on the Price is Right.

Brown, a pitcher for the Virginia Wesleyan softball team, transferred from Radford last year. Her freshman year she went on a trip to California for a softball tournament and her coach got tickets to The Price is Right.

Brown was determined to be on the show even before she went. She had been telling everyone, for months, that she would be on the show and she would win. When the team got to the studio there was a quick interview where people from the show asked questions like your name, and what you do for fun.

 I said my name is Britney Brown and I play poker, she said.  I had a bubbly personality that day I guess.

When they started calling names, she told her teammates to get ready to hear her name because she was going to get picked, and sure enough Brown s was the last name called.

For Brown, the game presented a little bit of a challenge and she embarrassed herself as soon as she got to the stage when she had to guess the price of a grandfather clock.

 I have no concept of money, so my dad told me to bid a dollar, and I guess he meant a dollar more than the last person, she said,  so when I was the first to bid I said $3,000, but then I changed it to $1 and everyone laughed.

Needless to say Brown would not have won the game without her teammates help. She had one friend who was really good at the game so she used her advice to get on stage by bidding $250 on night vision goggles.

Once on stage she played a game where she had to match the price to an item, which is how she won a dirt bike.

Then came time to spin the wheel, and Brown spun and landed on 90 cents. The winner is the person closest to $1, so she won a spot in the showcase with another college student, and got first pick.

She passed on bidding on the first showcase because it was just furniture and ended up bidding on the second showcase which turned out to be $1,000, a new 2006 dodge magnum and a trip to the British Virgin Islands. When it came time to name her bid she realized she was facing an angle where she couldn t see her teammates anymore so she had to rely on someone else to give her an answer.

 There was a little old lady who kept saying $35,000, so that s what I bid, she said.  I was only a couple thousand short of winning both showcases.

Once Brown won, she didn t even know what happened. Her box lit up, Bob Barker announced that she won and her team ran down to congratulate her.

 I was so out of it, I had no idea I won, she said.  Everyone who watches the show laughs because I just stood there.

As for meeting the shows famous host, Barker, Brown was not impressed.

 During a commercial I was still going crazy and he said,  you have problems, I don t know if they are physical, mental or probably both , she said.

After the show was over Brown went backstage to sign papers. Then she called her dad who didn t believe that she actually won. Her coach had to get on the phone to confirm that she had won.

By the time summer rolled around Brown had received all of her prizes, except for the $1,000 which was kept for Calif. State income tax, which she sold. She did keep the trip for two which her friend and sister fought for the second spot and her friend won. The total amount she got in prizes was about $35,700, which she spent over the summer.

She does have DVDs of the show but she doesn t like to show people.

 I look like an idiot and my parents were embarrassed, she said.

The day after the show aired, on March 28, Brown had 4,000 friend requests on Myspace and 7,000 friend requests on Facebook.

 It took hours to get rid of all those, she said.  There were a lot of weird people.