LIMA, OH (WLIO) - The Lima City Schools basketball players and cheerleaders are continuing a 16-year tradition of getting Christmas presents for families going through hard times.
The Lima City Schools athletes began the Adopt a Family Program back in 2017 when the middle school girls' basketball team went out to eat at the Ryan Steakhouse, the day they announced they were closing. It was a surprise to everyone, including their waitress.
"She had not purchased her Christmas gifts yet. She was going to purchase them with the following check and when they closed they weren't going to have another check and my late wife, Monica Pughsley, said we needed to do something and we needed to get involved to help her," recalled Warren Pughsley, who has been organizing the program since that day.
The initiative grew bigger and bigger each year, now involving all of the basketball players and cheerleaders from middle school to high school. Starting out, they gave gifts to one family each year, but this year they were able to provide Christmas gifts for nine. The program turns athletes into outstanding members of the community off the court by teaching them how it feels to lift up others.
"They give us a list of like what the kids like and we go out and we find it. And we put it in a bag for them, we wrap it up," explained Isaiah Wilson, a junior and point guard for the Lima Senior Varsity Basketball team. "And we just give it back to them. It's always a great thing because I always like to give back to other families because some people aren't as fortunate as others, so it feels good to give back to families."
This year, one of the original members of the team that adopted the first family, Erika Wilson, came back to help run the program. She was thrilled to see how far Adopt a Family has come, and how many students are learning the same valuable lessons that she did.
"I think it had a huge impact on us. I know Warren always instilled in us just being a great person and always looking out for others. Whether it's your teammates, even the other teams that we played that might have not have been as nice to us. But he always instilled in us to give back to others," Wilson said.
Though not every student might have had the money to buy gifts, everyone participated, whether it was wrapping them or helping carry them to a family's car. That's what the coaches aim to teach these kids- alone, you can't do much, but working together makes it easy to have an impact on your community.
