Coach Green's African Recruit (aka the Manager Blog)

My name is Steve Tuan and Coach Green recruited me all the way from South Africa (don't let my skin color fool you!). Coach Green's daughter was teaching at my high school and during the summer Coach Green came to Africa to visit his daughter. He brought basketballs and gear with him to conduct basketball clinics with the local kids. As a student at my dad's school, I volunteered to help out with the clinics. During that time, I was in my junior year and had no clue of what God had next for my life. While helping out with Coach Green, I got to know him a little bit more and he told me about the university that he coached at and said I should apply to study in America at Liberty. It's hard to imagine living and growing up in Africa and ending up studying in America. Little did I know, though, that through prayer and faith I would end up coming to Liberty.

When I came here, we had a campus tour that brought me to the Vines Center and I ran into Sam and he took me to see Coach Green. Right then and there Coach Green offered me a job to work with him and be a part of this program. I am so blessed to be a part of this program and it is only by God's divine intervention that I am here in America.

Enough about me; now on to some stories about the team!

A lot has happened during my years as a manager and throughout the years I've found out that our girls tend to forget things very often. But the most outrageous thing happened last week when in Charlottesville when we stopped at the hotel and I was passing out the room keys. I passed Jasmine's key to her and went on to the next person. A few second later I turned around and Jasmine was on the floor of the bus looking up and down. I asked her what happened and she said she lost her key. It was pretty outrageous, because I had given her the key less than 30 seconds earlier!

I am pretty proud of my managing career and have not messed up drastically during my time here until this semester. A month ago, I put the clothes in the dryer to dry and after I took them out, I found that I melted all of the practice jerseys, so the numbers were all smeared. So now all the practice jerseys look like they are tie-dyed! I thought it would help our team be in style, and really I just wanted us to be trendy, but I am pretty sure that we are now the only team in the country with tie-dyed practice jerseys!

Go Flames!

Steve Tuan

Christmas is Coming!!!!!

Christmas is coming!!!!! Well, actually Christmas has been coming to my quad for quite awhile! I live with Ashley, Catherine, and Reagan, and Catherine and Reagan have listening to Christmas music since October! Over Thanksgiving, Catherine decorated our quad – putting lights everywhere and hanging decorations from the ceiling. She even put up a Christmas tree!

Now that it’s after Thanksgiving, I feel like it is acceptable to talk about and decorate for Christmas, and I have to say that I am really excited as well. Reagan’s mom made us all stockings with our initials on them, and we are going to fill each other’s stockings with goodies – how fun is that??

Our plan is to have a Christmas dinner together right before we leave for break. I’m not exactly sure what we’re going to make for dinner, since we are all from different parts of the country and have different family traditions. However, I think I am going to make an executive decision right now and say that we will create our own traditions, since we are like our own little family. ☺ I guarantee you that there will be some ugly Christmas sweaters at the dinner, though, just because ugly sweaters are pretty much a universal Christmas treat!

In preparation for Christmas, we have been watching all of the Christmas movies on TV. There are soooo many good movies on, but obviously, the classic is Elf. I’d tell you what my favorite line of that movie is, but there are just too many great lines to choose from! I will say, though, that I love it when Buddy is singing with Jovi and when Buddy first experiences New York!

I hope that you are as excited for Christmas as I am! I also hope that during the holidays, you will remember the real reason for Christmas, because we wouldn’t have anything to celebrate if it wasn’t for Jesus’ birth!

Go Flames!

Katelyn