Category: Special Olympics Basketball

Spending time with Velvet Leonard was a highlight for sure as she was hard at work with her camera 📷 in a show of support for Special Olympics Basketball 🏀♥!

Once again, the young Lady 👩 that I proudly call our Third Daughter, happily gave of her time, effort and energy for the benefit of others !

Thank You Ma’am for being you !

Thank You to Chris and Laynie-Jo for sharing her with so many people !

We are going to have to de-ice 🧊 the Plane before taking off so I might have time to tell one story about The Basketball 🏀 Classic

Tammy Quesenberry is kept young by her Grandchildren and yesterday afternoon one of them had a MVP Moment !

Quez Studivent – Quez is young and full of energy and everyone who has spent time around him is nodding their head in agreement. Yesterday, we reached a point where every single Athlete had scored at least one basket 🧺 ➖ our youngest one, Miss Sara Delp.

Vickey Ritchie and I chase the same vision every minute we are awake. Inclusion is the Goal / Dream so we collectively tried to find a means for Sara to find the bottom of the net.

With Mr Delp giving us his blessing 🙏, Patrick Smith lifted Sara up in hopes of getting her an opportunity to score. We tried and tried but we couldn’t get the biscuit put in the basket.

Enter Quez, possibly laughing at us silly old people ( Vickey and I), little Man 👨 says why don’t we just lower the goal???

If Quez wasn’t laughing before, he most certainly was later when we couldn’t figure out how to lower it…..

” Do I have to do everything ???” was not what this polite young Man said, but in Hallmark Movie version we need that line. Quez grabbed the tool off the wall and lowered the goal himself.

Sara Delp sank the shot, the Gym erupted and in the movie 🎥 version both Sara and Quez were carried off on the shoulders of the masses.

There were so many Kodak moments from the three hours but for me, this one had to be the Lead !

Maybe Grandma 👵 can send me her favorite picture of Little Man so we can add it to this post 📫!

The Man 👨 of the Hour….

Bumblebee Hicks with her grandson Claybe and Quez…

Just enough energy left to tell a Bedtime 🌙 😴 story about a SPECIAL Lady 👩 and how all roads lead to Hillsville Elementary School 🏫 on Sunday afternoon !!

The East Coast version of the Map

Vickey Ritchie is a NEAT, NEAT Lady 👩. Maybe as neat as they get. It’s now Friday night and I have finally made it all the way to Marshall University, which will be our ( West Virginia Tech University Baseball) weekend home.

I was actually able to spend a few minutes at this one place I kinda like…

And checked in at the Office 🏢 at this place.
Tomorrow morning 🌄 I will be holding a 🎤🎙🎤 for a long time as we try to squeeze in an ultra rare tripleheader of College Baseball.
There was even a stopover at Timmons Arena to watch our All-Time scoring leader, Alyssa Ervin. I didn’t trouble her because it was her work day but it was neat to visit with her Mom before hand and Dad briefly after.

  Why add things to do on what was already going to be a long trip to and from Utah ? Easy one to answer there because last time I flew back across the country, we had to fly right back to beat the storm.

I wasn’t sure if my Brain could handle it if we had a second empty trip. Adding two other Big Ticket 🎟 items would protect my psyche ( Vickey will later tell me if I misspelled that word.)

I had to pick an Airport to fly into and the choices were RDU and use our tickets to watch the Duke University Women play North Carolina State or Ashville and make the 45 minute drive 🚗 to Travelers Rest. Easy Choice there…

We were supposed to host Lawrence Tech (Georgia ) on Saturday and Sunday afternoon in Beckley at our home stadium but that was moved to Marshall University ( 2 hour drive 🚗 each way) and condensed to an All You Can Play ▶️ One Day event because…….. they are calling for Snow ❄ and a bunch of it, starting Saturday night at Midnight.

I have been nervous about looking at the Hillsville forecast because there’s nothing I can do about it now.

5:00 am Flight ✈️ back out of TRI Airport in Blountsville, Tennessee could be interesting when its all said and done.

This brings me back to why someone would fly 5,000 round-trip twice just to hold a 🎤 for a few hours ?????

The first time that I was told by a Doctor ( Dr Dale in Luray) that I was on the brink of a stroke and about to Kill myself, Doc told me to stop ✋ pushing the envelope for people. He said, I want you to close your eyes 👀 and ask yourself how many of these people you are doing things for are attending your funeral ??

Doc got my attention and I moved to an Island 🏝 and lost 140 pounds 💷.  Silly me, I thought I could do better the second time around. Driven is the word I choose but others would say loony tunes…

I have simply never met another human being that I believe is chasing the EXACT same thing I am – Inclusion, 24 /7, across the board ♥.

If Doctor Dale was here, I would tell him that Vickey Ritchie would attend my funeral, hopefully 🙏 not anytime soon !

Seeing Alyssa play Ball was terrific, starting our 18th season of Golden Bears 🐻 Baseball is way Cool 😎. But the reason for this trip is to stand beside Coach Vickey on Sunday afternoon !!!