Lady Lancers collect $500 in food for community
“It was really fun to do something for the community and at Christmas time, it was good,” Granger girls basketball team caption and co-organizer of the event, Madison Peterson said. “It was our first food drive and it was a lot of food.”
Peterson organized the event with her mom, Michelle Peterson, after realizing the need for the Lady Lancers to provide some sort of service to give back to the community.
“With the kids applying to college now, we realized we needed to find a service project,” Michelle Peterson said. “We looked at what our community needs right now, and we decided it was the food bank. We owe a special thanks to Fresh Market manager, Dan Christie, who was willing to give us whatever we needed to do the drive.”
Eleven out of the 15 players were able to volunteer at the event. Each girl created her own cardboard sign to depict the needs of the community. Some read ‘Hungry and lost job,’ ‘Work for food,’, or ‘Single mom.’
At one point, a women approached team member Amber Wright, and explained that she was offended by the signs because she was close to being homeless herself.
“Amber explained to the lady that they were not making fun of these situations. They were just trying to illustrate the needs and encourage people to help,” Michelle Peterson said. “The experience shook Amber up a little bit, and we had the opportunity as a team to talk about the real aspect of what we were doing. The food we were collecting was actually needed and it made the experience even more real for the girls.”
The food was collected and dropped of in the food bank bin at RC Willey. From there, the food went to the Utah Food Bank in Salt Lake City. They had more food than the bin could hold, according to Michelle Peterson.
