3-Year-Old Crowned Homecoming Queen
One high school football team was so inspired by a remarkable 3-year-old girl, they decided to crown her homecoming queen.
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Ever since they and fellow students of Manual High School in Denver, Colo. helped landscape the backyard of ailing preschooler Avelynn (nicknamed Avi) this summer, they could not get the child out of their minds. “When we saw that little girl walk out onto her new lawn it touched my heart so much,” student Losseny Knoe told Fox31 Denver. “I wanted to cry.” So they decided to do something special for Avi — an open-heart surgery survivor — and made good on that goal Friday at their homecoming game, when they decreed her royalty.
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Avi and her buddies this summer. (Photo: Fox31 Denver)
“We were worried she would be overwhelmed, or that it would all be too much, but she absolutely loved it,” teacher Benjamin Butler, the defensive coordinator for the Manual High School football team, tells Yahoo Parenting. “She was smiling at the players, pointing to her framed picture, and just seemed to be basking in the special moment. She was everything that you would hope a homecoming queen would be.”
(Photo: Fox31 Denver)
Her crowning moment, Butler reveals, was dreamed up by one of the players. “The initial idea was to have Avi come out as an honorary captain for the coin toss, and then one of the boys said we should make her homecoming queen,” he says. “Our athletic director also had the idea of presenting her with a Manual ‘M’ [for the high school’s name] in a signed frame, and by the end of it, the team had all signed a pair of game cleats for her, just because they wanted to give her anything that they had or could think of.”
(Photo: Fox31 Denver)
Their tiny muse has made such an impact on the athletes because of her fighting spirit, believes Butler. After she was born, Avi was not expected to survive beyond six weeks.
“She is such an amazing little girl with an incredible smile, and to see her light up like that just touched something very deep inside the boys,” explains the educator. “These are young men who spend all day, especially in the summer, so focused on football and getting better, stronger, faster, and to meet this little girl who spends her days in such a different way and working so hard for such different reasons it really offered a new perspective on life for them.”
(Photo: Fox31 Denver)
And while the pint-sized queen may have gotten all the attention at homecoming, Butler says his players deserve recognition, as well. “I am immensely proud of the team,” he insists. “We are at a school that knows a thing or two about adversity, and to see them rally around Avi and want to do everything they could think of for her makes me as a coach and teacher almost speechless with pride and appreciation.”
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