In just a few
minutes, the EOU Women's Basketball Team leaves to spend time at a
local elementary school. The philosophy of the NAIA tournament
includes a significant amount of outreach to the local community.
Each team has been "adopted" by a local elementary school,
and this morning, the women are to meet with as many classes of
3rd-6th graders as possible in the hour that's been allocated for
this event.
The elementary
kids had a batch of artwork they'd created last week delivered to
Coach Weissenfluh yesterday, and she distributed it to the women
last night in a team meeting. The pictures and words written
on these posters reflect their understanding of either the geography
of where we live and/or the name "Mountaineers."
Most have drawn pictures of snow-capped mountain ranges in the
background of the posters which include phrases like:
-
"Scoreboard
broken because of too many points being scored!"
-
"Miracles
do happen!" (some of the team took a little offense
to that one!)
-
"Get
your game on; get your game on; go play........yeah!"
-
"From
Tanner to the Mountaineers: I want you to win!"
-
"Good
Luck...you're going to need alot of it!" (also wasn't
especially popular
with the team!)
Coach Weissenfluh
also brought back from her coaches meeting where these posters were
distributed, an individual poster for each member of the team which
has the Champions of Character logo, the NAIA/EOU logo, their
individual picture in uniform, and a cut-out phrase that says
"Good Luck, Go Mountaineers." These were also made
by the elementary kids. All these posters are taped to the
outside doors of our rooms at the motel, and it looks like a little
EOU village at this end of the hallway!
The Champions of Character Banquet last night at the Convention
Center was awesome--over 1000 people, complete with live music,
classic cars in which the teams could have their pictures taken, a
trivia contest with an Austin Powers look-alike, and inspirational
welcomes and presentations. Our team "took it all
in" and looked so sharp, were attentive, gracious, and again
represented the best of what EOU should be known for.
Afterwards, there was another team meeting (in my room since it
seems to be the biggest!) and several players stayed to work on
homework, retrieve Blackboard assignments from the WEB, get their
email, let down, talk, etc. I'm grateful for this wonderful
experience.
