Yesterday was the East Aurora 5th grade Girls' Basketball Tournament sponsored by Triple Threat Mentoring. Each of the 12 elementary schools had a team of girls that played in the tournament. I've written about our friend, Frances, before whom we've come to love like our own daughter. She's in 5th grade this year and played on the Bardwell team. When the team started practicing in January, it was pretty obvious that basketball was a new sport for most of the girls, Frances included. Well, just 6 weeks later, Frances helped lead the team to a 2nd place finish. They played 4 terrific games, and Frances was a star in each of them---on offense and defense. She was awesome. Last night we took her to church with us, and when she got in the car, she was carrying the new Nike basketball that Triple Threat gave all the girls. And she was on cloud 9--no, cloud 15. Frances is typically pretty quiet, but she talked non-stop all the way to church and back. She even said, "Maybe I can get a basketball scholarship to go to college!"
Who knows if Frances will even go on to play basketball in middle school, but the joy and confidence I saw in her yesterday proved again how important it is to provide opportunities like this for the kids in East Aurora. Without an experience like this, provided by an organization like Triple Threat and a couple of deeply devoted principals and teachers from the district, a girl like Frances might never discover a God-given talent.
