Tag: inter city basketball

Building relationships

Hi everyone! LaRayne here, St. Joseph’s Native American Studies teacher.

I recently teamed up with Sherry, one of our counselors, to oversee St. Joseph’s eight week inter-city basketball program.

Sherry and I were blessed with being able to watch some relationships being built between our St. Joseph’s Indian School girls and the girls from the Chamberlain community. We had 31 total girls take part in the fun and 16 of those were St. Joseph’s girls.  We had four teams which were named after four WNBA teams:  Charlotte Sting, Los Angeles Sparks, Washington Mystics and the Minnesota Lynx.  The Lynx have a connection to St. Joseph’s through a church in Minnesota.

Not only did the girls get to build relationships as a team on the basketball court, but also in other areas.  During the second week of the program, Sherry and I created a fun night of team building skills, games and activities along with a fun meal and a swim in the pool on our campus.  The girls continued to build relationships while playing a game they really love – basketball.  The community and campus come together for a great cause.  Our referees and coaches were all from the community as well as St. Joseph’s employees and family members.

The last week of inter-city encompassed two all star games (one for the younger and one for the older girls) and another hour in the pool to finish the program.

Sherry and I look forward to building this program in the years ahead so that when our students from St. Joseph’s attend the public high school, they will see familiar faces at high school and will have built some relationships that will last for years to come.

Faith, Academics and Service

Catholic School's Week is finally here!
It's Catholic School's Week: January 29 - February 5, 2012.

Today begins Catholic Schools Week, with the theme of Faith, Academics and Service. Today’s scripture readings lent themselves to a reflection on each of those. It’s not enough for students to be smart about their subject matter. What they learn needs to help them become people who understand God’s plan for them and find ways uniquely their own to serve the human family.

During the announcements at mass, I congratulated student achievements of all kinds. The high school one-act play took 2nd place at the regions and the thespians will advance to the state competition in Aberdeen next week. Cassidy, one of our 7th graders, has made the high school junior varsity gymnastics team. In only her 2nd meet, Cassidy placed in several events and brought home a 5th place overall. She was sitting up front with the choir, and when I mentioned her name, she got very embarrassed, but everyone gave her a big hand.

Cassidy may have appeared embarrassed at mass, but when I joined Pinger Home (6th-8th grade girls) for brunch, she brought down the gymnastics ribbon she won from the Hot Springs match to show me.  When I first arrived at Pinger after mass, most of the girls were upstairs in the bedroom area cleaning. While the Pinger Home was just remodeled two years ago and still looks very new, that crew of girls may be the best cleaners we have, as the home looked spotless. But at least a couple of the girls chose the part of Mary rather than Martha, and shared hospitality as they sat to visit with me while Brian, the houseparent put the finishing touches on the food.

The leisure was short lived as most of the girls were off to play inter city basketball, and I headed home to make Sunday truly an appreciated day of rest.