"Tis the Season for Giving....

Every year we adopt a family from Ada for Christmas... Our girls split into teams, pool their resources, and take a night to go shopping for their family member. This is a great opportunity to step back and think about our blessings as well as take time to think of someone else in need....Last year, our senior, Erin Brand was wearing a women's basketball sweatshirt while working at the local drive through in town....the customer in the car saw her sweatshirt and disclosed that it was his family that we had helped. He literally had tears in his eyes when he described how much it meant that we had adopted his family for the Holidays....that moment really resonated with Erin and I know when she shared that with her team last year, and this year's team, it really hit home about what we can each do for others to make their day just a little bit brighter....

This Sunday, we made our team dinner night a chance to wrap and organize the gifts before we send them out this week, which you can see the gift wrapping going on in some of the shots....not everyone has gift wrapping skills, though! We also had Coach Durand's chicken and biscuits and other fine foods (Lauren Cassell makes a mean brocoli salad and Lish Rinehart added her cheesy potatoes to the table, but I think the award may go to Kara Dysert's mom Bridgette with her dessert....I am not sure the name of it, but it was hit!). After the dinner and wrapping gifts we were also lucky enough to have a guest speaker come in and talk to several of our ONU athletic teams about the mental side of sport....he did a great job of motivating our girls to stay positive and really believe that you can achieve anything....a very fitting message for us and the goals we have for this year! GO BEARS! ~ Coach Terrell