When a tornado ripped through Kankakee last week, Grace Christian Academy’s eighth-grade girl’s volleyball team wasn’t thinking about regionals, which were just a day away.
Instead, they got to work serving food, collecting donations and supporting neighbors who were displaced from their homes.
Their practice space, the gymnasium inside the school, turned into home base for disaster recovery and meal services.
“We’ve had families come in that have just been devastated by this storm,” said Kathryn Eaton, the school’s physical education teacher and also the team coach.
The players, now unable to practice, didn’t hesitate to help.
“They’ve walked hand-in-hand carrying boxes, helping the get baby food, toiletries,” Eaton said.
Her daughter Kaleigh, a setter for the team, said she wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.
“I probably carried like a 100 water bottles, of those cases. I wouldn’t have picked volleyball over that,” Kaleigh Eaton said.
The team went straight from serving meals to regionals.
“We had a lot of mixed feelings,” Kathryn Eaton told NBC 5. “I had parents contacting me saying umm we’re going in as underdogs, we haven’t practiced. Maybe we should forfeit.”
Instead, the team gave it their all.
They won both sets, advancing to sectionals for the first time.
Grace Christian Academy’s gymnasium was converted to help serve recovery efforts after an EF-3 tornado hit the area last Tuesday.“I had full confidence in my team. We can do anything, we can put it together because we’ve done so much already,” Kaleigh Eaton told NBC 5.
Elwood, their competitor last week, was also thinking about more than a game.
They made the team charms with the letter “G” to show their support for the entire school community.
“And there were so many donations that they brought to us, it was really sweet,” Naomi Most, another player, told NBC Chicago.
“That was just a huge blessing to see another community coming together for our community,” Coach Kathryn Eaton said.
Tuesday night will be another chance to make history as the team faces Ottawa Marquette in sectionals. If they win, they’ll advance to the state competition Friday.
The team hasn’t had a real practice in 12 days, but Kaleigh Eaton has no doubts her team will pull off another victory.
“I have full confidence in us,” she said.
For the coach, win or lose, her girls have demonstrated to the entire community what showing up really looks like.
“I mean look at this tornado that hit,” Kathryn Eaton said. “Like everything tears you down and we want to build each other up. And they do a really good job of building each other up.”
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