*We Celebrated our Lady Cougars' State Championship!!

We finally got to celebrate as a community our Lady Cougars and their phenomenal journey this season to the 3A Basketball State Championship!

There was a hamburger supper followed by a "pep rally" style celebration, complete with comments from coaches, players and even politicians congratulating the State Champs and giving them city and state proclamations of their championship status.

Local community leaders helped sponsor the celebration and our own Journey Christian Community (Joe & Matt) provided sound and video equipment and production for the program.

The team's manager, Lauren Gleason, and two other choir members, Laura Day & Chelsea Lambert, sang "Believe" (Brooks & Dunn) which became a theme song for the team this season.

The gym was set up complete with the blow-up Cougar head used at the football games, the beautiful new State Championship banner that will forever hang in the China Spring gym, and the impressive state championship team trophy. The team wore their state champ metals and their new state champ t-shirts.

Young and old alike got the team members' autographs, mostly on their new state champ t-shirts.

The athletic booster club president, Brian Richardson (my bro-in-law), auctioned off a team basketball signed by the entire team and coaches... it brought $1000!!!

The whole night was magical, much like the entire Lady Cougar season. We even had "Cinderella" at the ball!! HA! Coach 'A' had a deal with the team...if they made it to Regionals, he'd wear a dress! He made good on his promise in front of the entire community at the celebration!!!

The evening was punctuated with the Channel 6 10:00 PM newscast featuring the special night's event, with the ending video featuring none other than my two beautiful nieces (Alli Richardson #11 [Senior] & Kelli Richardson #10 [Freshman]) and my BEAUTIFUL BABY BOY showing off his "Cougar" onesie I made him for the state tournament. The team and coaches had all signed the back of his onesie!! My baby was a STAR!!! (hee-hee!)