WHITEHALL — This week was Veterans Day, which means, for the Whitehall girls basketball team, the Veterans Appreciation Game is on its way.
The Vikings' program launched the now-annual tradition during the 2023-24 season, taking advantage of a scheduled game with Montague happening to fall on Dec. 7 by hosting a Pearl Harbor remembrance prior to that contest. Then-Vikings player Taylor Ottinger spearheaded the effort as part of a National Honor Society project, and Lianne Fagan picked it up from her for the 2024-25 event; both have family members who served in the armed forces.
The game has seen money raised for the White Lake VFW via special cornhole boards that were created and sold, and this year adirondack chairs will be the fundraising items sold, with the VFW and Whitehall American Legion each receiving half of the proceeds.
This year, Lianne's sisters Janie, a senior, and Allie, a sophomore, have taken the lead planning the event, which will take place Jan. 9 when Whitehall faces Manistee. It will commemorate the 35th anniversary of the early-1990s Gulf War.
"I enjoy their smiles, the joy that they get from it," Janie Fagan said. "This is one of our only fundraisers through NHS that are for veterans, so I feel like them getting recognized is really what makes me want to do the project, because it's the joy that they get from it. It doesn't even have to involve money. It's just them being able to talk to someone."
The veterans game is also meaningful to the team's coach, Brian Milliron, whose father-in-law, Larry Bacon, served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. He hopes the game serves as an example to his two daughters, both involved in the Vikings hoops program, for how to pay tribute to their grandfather's service.
"Too many of the men and women who served in that conflict were treated poorly when they returned, and Larry was one of them," Milliron said. "We can never take back that poor treatment, but we can do better moving forward, and having an annual event like this is a small way of showing our appreciation."
Janie said she has learned a lot from Ottinger and her sister on how to run an event like this from watching them do it and has benefited from that.
"I've been able to learn a lot of organization skills, like how to keep the money safe, and what are good ways to fundraise, and what are good places to contact about donating money," Fagan said of Ottinger. "She's given me a lot of tips and different things to take with me as I do this project that I'm able to give to other people as well."
Fagan said feedback from the veterans is consistently positive, and the games have drawn some of the bigger attendance figures each of the two seasons they've occurred - another motivation to host the events, as Milliron shared, "Playing in quiet gyms is not fun."
"Each year, we get great feedback from the veterans," Fagan said. "They'll go back to the VFW, or the Legion, and they'll tell their friends about the game, and we have great turnouts at every game. They bring their friends. They bring their family. They don't only talk about it to us. They share the word."
