Lady Griz bake-off highlight of Saturday's fundraiser
1/27/2012 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Jan. 27, 2012
Wednesday's practice -- the team's final day of preparation before Thursday's game against Eastern Washington -- had not even started, and the minds of the Lady Griz players, at least for a few minutes, were already on Saturday.
The Montana-Portland State matchup, the first of two meetings this season between the preseason Big Sky Conference favorites, the teams that have represented the Big Sky at the last four NCAA tournaments, could get anyone looking ahead, but prior to Wednesday's practice the trash talking centered not on Eagles or Vikings but ... monster cookies?
One of the most compelling dramas surrounding Saturday's game, at least the pregame, will be the bake-off taking place at a table in the west concourse.
As part of the game's fundraising efforts for the Northwest Burn Foundation, the Lady Griz players will each be putting their baking skills to the test. And up for public judging and sale.
If the pre-practice scene Wednesday is any indication, the results will be closely monitored from the locker room and be the source of some hefty bragging rights.
Jordan Sullivan was the first to announce her intention to supply monster cookies for the cause, and that's what got it started.
Kenzie De Boer -- who finds the joy of competition in everything, now to include the baking of confections -- added her name to the monster cookies list, with the throw-down addendum, "mine will be the best."
Off to the side, Katie Baker, who has the obvious etymological advantage over all her teammates, could only shake her head, partly in disagreement but mostly out of feigned sympathy for the unsuspecting pretenders, the future runners-up in Saturday's bake-off.
"They won't be like the (monster cookies) I'm bringing," she said quietly and confidently, then added with what should have come with a wink, "We have a secret family recipe." Well then.
There are promises of Oreo cupcakes and Oreo balls, banana bars, cake pops and cupcakes, and freshman Haley Vining wants you to try the donuts she'll be making for the occasion with the new donut maker she received for Christmas.
The bake sale is one of a number of fundraising efforts coordinated by Alyssa Smith -- oatmeal butterscotch cookies anyone? -- and Mike O'Herron, a Missoula City Councilman and, like most who know her and her story, a fan of Smith's.
Smith's relationship with the Northwest Burn Foundation goes back farther and runs deeper in her life than even basketball.
Smith severely burned her hands -- wrist to fingertip -- as a toddler at her daycare center's bathroom sink. The center's hot water heater accidentally had been set at 140 degrees.
Smith spent her second birthday in the hospital and will forever have total-hand skin grafts as a lifelong reminder of the accident.
Today she is a confident 20-year-old college student, totally comfortable in her own skin, but it wasn't always that way.
"Little kids can be really mean," she says about the verbal taunts she absorbed. The ridiculing led to deep emotional scars that matched her physical ones.
"I wasn't sure why it had to happen to me and why my hands had to look like they did. I would cover them up as much as possible. It was an internal thing that I really struggled with."
The most important step in overcoming the obstacle life had set before her was the opportunity to go to the Northwest Burn Foundation's Camp Eyabsut when she was seven.
The camp, held annually at North Bend, Wash., is a place where -- as the Foundation promotes -- kids are just kids. For the first time in her life Smith was among understanding cohorts who did not stare or even care about the scars on her hands.
"I didn't realize at the time how much impact the camp would have on the rest of my life," Smith says. "It helped me so much, just seeing others who had been through much worse rise above (their own circumstances)."
Eyabsut means "to rise above anything." It's a fitting title, one that holds enough meaning and emotional sway with Smith that she has the word tattooed on the inside of her wrist.
It's burned into her flesh, purposefully located just below the scarred palm of her hand. With one glance she can look down and see the two disparate, lifelong reminders. One of the past, one of why the past will not define her.
She's been going to the camp for 13 years now, the last three as a camp counselor. As a leader she is able to share her own story of overcoming with a new group of survivors every summer.
"To rise above anything. That's how I live my life," she says. "If I can get over the scars on my hands, I can get over anything.
"I can get over a loss. I can get over a bad grade. I can get over any little struggle, because I've learned a person can rise above anything. That's what I try to share."
To assist the Northwest Burn Foundation and Camp Eyabsut, bring your spare coins and small (or large) bills and drop them in the firefighter boots that will be offered up by volunteers at each of Dahlberg Arena's entry points Saturday.
There will be a shot contest in the west concourse, and the Foundation's executive director, Amber Fowler, will be manning an information booth in the ticket office lobby.
But get there early. Lady Griz-Vikings always attracts one of the best crowds of the season, and the monster cookies won't last.
