Members of the NCAA champion Penn State women's rugby team pose with President Donald Trump on Friday. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Trump with NCAA champs: A wrestling pose, a prayer, a call to 'save the Second Amendment!'

President Donald Trump met Friday with a parade of NCAA championship teams at the White House, marking the occasion by spiking a volleyball, striking a wrestling pose and pausing for a prayer.

Trump did not reply to shouted questions from the pool reporter, who relayed details of the NCAA event, about why he had tweeted about allegations of sexual misconduct against Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) but not about allegations against Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama.


Altogether, the president met with 18 college championship teams, including the University of Utah’s ski team, the Texas A&M women’s equestrian team, the University of Florida baseball team and the Arizona State University women’s triathlon team. The photo-ops were held in a series of White House venues, beginning in the Rose Garden and wrapping up almost an hour later in the State Dining Room.

In the Rose Garden, Trump struck a wrestling pose with the Penn State University men’s wrestling team. On the South Lawn, a member of the University of Washington women’s rowing team joked about the president being surrounded by women — to which Trump’s response was inaudible to the pool reporter watching the event. The president was joined on the lawn by White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, an Ohio native, who joined in congratulating the Ohio State men’s volleyball team.

After taking a thumbs-up photo with the Buckeye volleyball players, Trump grabbed a ball and spiked it toward the last row of players, where one of them caught it.

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With the University of Maryland men’s lacrosse team, Trump posed with Dylan Maltz, an attackman from nearby Ashburn, Virginia, who wore a tie whose pattern read “Trump.” With the Maryland women’s team, the pool reporter relayed that Trump may have made an off-color joke, “based on both the gasps and laughter of the team,” but that the president’s remarks were inaudible.

The parade of teams then moved into the East Room, where Trump was joined by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. There, the president prayed with the University of Oklahoma softball team. In the Red Room, Trump met the University of West Virginia’s co-ed rifle team, entering the room and remarking, “Second Amendment, right? Save the Second Amendment!"

One West Virginia student athlete joked with the president about being interested in a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, to which Trump asked, “Do you like the choice of [Jerome] Powell?”, the president’s pick to chair the Federal Reserve. Trump added that Powell was “going to be good.”

