Thanksgiving, the tradition-filled holiday packed with gratitude, endless amounts of food and great company, has now passed. Since ENC closed campus from Wednesday, November 21 until Sunday, November 25, many students were able to make exciting plans for the holiday.
Kori Bow, a junior biology major with a pre-physical therapy track, was thrilled to be going back home to Southern Vermont for the first time since the beginning of the fall semester. For Bow, Thanksgiving was filled with lots of family traditions. Every Thanksgiving morning, Bow and her family drive to Arlington, their neighboring town, and participate in a 5k called the Turkey Trot. “We’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember,” said Bow. After the race, the family spent the day cooking and listening to Christmas music while the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade was playing in every room. When the food was ready, the family gathered together to eat their feast and finished their day with a Hallmark movie.
While some students had the opportunity to go home and celebrate the holidays with their families, others, like the Women’s Varsity Basketball team, did not. Games were scheduled for Tuesday, November 22nd and Saturday, November 24th making it hard for the team to go home. Madison Flowers, the Assistant Director of Admissions and Associate Head Basketball Coach, spent her seventh Thanksgiving on campus with students this year. Flowers along with Sacha Santimano, the Head Coach, opened their home and invited the team to spend the day cooking, playing games and just having fun.
Flowers’ favorite part of Thanksgiving was compiling a list of each girl’s family tradition and trying to incorporate as many things into the day as possible. “It’s important to us that it’s fun. We enjoy it because we know it’s a lot to be an 18-20 year old and not be able to be with family for Thanksgiving,” said Flowers, “We hope that it gave them a sense of a family away from their family and hope they still enjoyed their holiday and felt like they got to have the same experience, except with different people.”
Senior, Emma Farrow, is one of the varsity players stayed on campus throughout the break. As a transfer student, this was Farrow’s first holiday at ENC. Despite being far away from her family in Ohio, Farrow said she had a great time. Farrow’s favorite part of the holiday was the food and shopping at the Braintree Mall with the team on Black Friday. “The atmosphere of being with my teammates was awesome,” said Farrow, “I think it’s important to have bonding like this for teams because it’s nice to get a ‘home’ feel when you’re away from home.”