Jackson State University baseball will open the 2023 season in the inaugural Cactus Jack HBCU Classic, in partnership with the Houston Astros and the Cactus Jack Foundation.
The opening weekend event will be played Friday – Sunday, February 17-19 at Minute Maid Park, home of the World Series Champion Astros. JSU is one of six teams in the event, along with fellow Southwestern Athletic Conference teams Mississippi Valley State, Southern, Grambling, Prairie View A&M, and Texas Southern.
JSU will face Southern Friday at 7 p.m., Mississippi Valley Saturday at 11 a.m., and Prairie View A&M Sunday at 3 p.m. in non-conference games.
The Cactus Jack HBCU Classic week includes a variety of events, highlighted by a college fair featuring over 100 colleges and universities hosted by the Astros Youth Academy at Minute Maid Park.
The partnership with the Cactus Jack Foundation for the tournament supports their longstanding commitment to raising money and providing scholarship opportunities for students to attend HBCUs. It is a cause that is important to Travis Scott given his family’s longtime legacy studying, working, and supporting HBCUs: his mother Wanda attended Grambling University, his father Jacques went to Prairie View A&M, where his brother Josh currently studies, and his sister Jordan graduated from Howard University last year.
His grandfather, Waymon Webster, was an alumnus and dean of Prairie View A&M graduate school and is the namesake for the Waymon Webster Scholarships given out by the Cactus Jack Foundation, which helps HBCU students who are experiencing last-minute financial adversity graduate on time with their class. For the second consecutive year in 2022 and in conjunction with Travis Scott’s Project H.E.A.L. initiative, the Waymon Webster Scholarship Fund granted $1,000,000 in scholarships to 100 graduating HBCU seniors.
Tickets for the tournament are on sale now. Visit Astros.com/hbcuclassic for more information.