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For 20 seconds, she lived a dancer's worst nightmare—which then became a dream come true

Utah Jazz dancer Danielle Bush got lost mid-performance and had to improvise until she realized what was really happening.

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Utah Jazz dancer Danielle Bush got the surprise of her life when her fellow dancers started doing a totally different routine.

It's a dancer's worst nightmare. You're in the middle of a performance you've rehearsed over and over when all of a sudden you forget what you're doing. Everyone else is in sync, and you're hopelessly out of step, trying desperately to not make it obvious that you're completely lost.

That's sort of what happened to Utah Jazz dancer Danielle Bush earlier this week during a basketball half-time performance. Bush didn't forget the routine, though—it just suddenly changed on her in the middle of it. The song, the routine, all of it. To her credit, Bush rallied, smiled and did her best to improvise, but it was clear she was lost. For a torturous 20 seconds, she tried to keep up—and then she figured out what was really going on.

What started out as a nightmare turned into a heartwarming surprise that the rest of her fellow dancers were in on.

Watch:

How can a video be so painful to watch and yet end up with such a happy ending? The poor girl was so confused until she actually heard what the song had been changed to—Bruno Mars' "Marry You"—and realized it had to have been changed for her.

According to KSL News, the proposal had been planned in secret since earlier in the month. Bush's boyfriend (now fiance) Brandon had asked Jazz Dancers director Ashley Kelson if it were possible to pop the question on the court.

"I wanted to make it big and special for her for sure," Kelson told the outlet. "Making it a part of the routine was so much fun."

Kelson scheduled Bush to be at a community event during a rehearsal where the other dancers learned the alternate routine. The team only had one practice to rehearse the proposal, and they pulled it off beautifully.

"It was an honor to plan with Brandon and be a part of their special moment and just proud of my team for keeping it a surprise," Kelson said. "It definitely was a team effort."

And it was definitely a proposal to remember. Congratulations, Danielle and Brandon!


This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Identity

Crowd hushes for a blind basketball player to hear the basket—then goes wild when she makes it

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Jules Hoogland heard the basket, then made her free throw shot to cheers from the crowd.

It's a common belief that disabilities make it impossible to do certain things. Sometimes that's true—but not nearly as often as people might assume. With the right support and accommodations, people with all manner of disabilities can participate in far more activities than society expects.

Take, for instance, a team sport like basketball. Can a person who can't see play that sport? How would they know where they are on the court? How would they know where to throw the ball or locate where the basket is? How could they keep track of where their teammates are and what they're doing?

Without a little imagination in answering them, those questions seem like they'd exclude blind people from being able to play basketball. However, when inclusion is the goal, human beings can figure out all kinds of ways to make the seemingly impossible happen.

High school basketball player Jules Hoogland is completely blind. As a junior at Zeeland East High School in Michigan, Hoogland plays on Zeeland's Unified Sports team made up of students with and without disabilities.

As she set up for a free throw, the crowd fell into a hush so Hoogland could hear the tapping of the basket so she could put the ball in the right spot. A fellow player ensured she was positioned for the shot, and Hoogland nailed it.

Watch:

Not only was it a great shot, it was an awesome example of what support and inclusion can look like from both a school and a community.

Unified Sports is a program by Special Olympics that promotes inclusion in sports by bringing people with and without intellectual or physical disabilities together to play on the same team. Unified Sports teams are made up of people of similar age and skill to create a level playing field and to make practices and games both challenging and fun.

The goal is not so much for those without disabilities to "help" those with; rather, it's a way to empower everyone to have fun together through sports. Teammates work together to play their personal and collective best for the good of the team.

According to Special Olympics, about 1.4 million people worldwide take part in Unified Sports. What a beautiful way for everyone to benefit from the fun and camaraderie sports can provide, and to provide a way for people of all abilities and disabilities to build bonds of friendship.

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Seahawks QB Russell Wilson made a simple but powerful gender equality statement after a big win

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This article originally appeared on 10.13.20


It's not every day that you see an NFL player sporting a jersey of a professional female athlete. In fact, if most of us wrack our brains, we probably can't think of any day that we've seen that.

So when Russell Wilson, longtime quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks (recently traded to the Denver Broncos), walked out of the locker room after last night's last-minute win against the Minnesota Vikings, people took notice of his shirt—a yellow and green jersey with the name and number of Sue Bird, the Seattle Storm WNBA superstar player. The Storm just took home their fourth WNBA National Championship title.

But that wasn't all he did.

In the post-game press conference, a reporter asked him how he felt on the last drive in which he led the team on a 94-yard drive in the final two minutes of the game, ultimately completing a pass to the end zone on 4th and 10 to win the game. "What's going through your head?" the reporter asked.

Wilson smiled, chuckled, and said, "I feel like Sue Bird in the clutch, you know?"

It was a simple sentence, but a meaningful one.

Paola Boivin, who was a sports writer for the Arizona Republic for 20 years and the first female journalist ever inducted into the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame, shared what the moment meant to her on Twitter.

"Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson just said, 'I feel like Sue Bird in the clutch.' In my era following sports growing up, I never remember a male athlete saying something like this. It seems simplistic, but this is powerful."

In many fields, including professional sports, girls and women had to have male role models prior to doors being opened for women to excel on the public stage. Then, once women went through those doors and made a name for themselves, women had female role models to look up to. But it's been rare to see it go the other way—to see boys or men express personal admiration for a female excelling in her field. And especially in a professional sport like football, which is pretty much entirely male, to have a star like Russell Wilson point to a female athlete as an example of the excellence he aspired to is, indeed, noteworthy at this stage of the game.

Someday, it won't be. Excellence knows no gender, and it's only outdated thinking and outdated ideas of manhood and masculinity that keep people locked in boxes of who our role models can be and how our fandom can be expressed. Russell Wilson is clearly a fan of Sue Bird, as is any Seattle resident who pays any attention to sports whatsoever. But he also clearly sees her as an athletic role model, and it's just awesome to see him express that so openly.

Wilson's sister plays basketball at Stanford, and he has been an outspoken supporter of women's sports in general. Here's a video of him from February sharing his and his wife Ciara's support on National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

Love to see it. The more we all support one another, the better the chances that all of us will excel. Thanks for setting the example, Russell Wilson.

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Four sisters play for the same top high school basketball team. How they got there is extraordinary.

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The Rich sisters have a unique history with the coach of their high school basketball team.

The Rich sisters are unusual for their shared basketball skills. All four of them—senior Mackenzie, junior Courtney, sophomore Avery and eighth-grader Dakota—play for the top-ranked New London-Spicer High School basketball team in New London, Minnesota. But according to a report by KARE 11, the fact that four sisters all play for the same high school team at the same time isn't the most interesting part of their story.

The Wildcats are ranked No. 1 in the state and are coached by Mike Dreier, who has been coaching the team for 43 seasons. One of the reasons Coach Dreier has been there for so long? The Rich girls' dad, Earl.

Earl Rich attended New London-Spicer High School himself and played sports, like his daughters. He was also a foster kid who caught the eye and heart of caring coach Mike Dreier.

Earl's mother became unable to care for him due to illness when he was in second grade. His biological father wasn't in the picture, and Earl ended up living in five different foster homes.

When Dreier found out that Earl was going to be transferred to a different school his sophomore year because his fifth foster family was giving him up, the coach made a quick decision.

“I was in the lunchroom one day,” Dreier told KARE, “and the music teacher was saying, ‘Aww, Earl's gonna have to move to Willmar.’ Listened to him and I said, ‘Well he can come live with me.’”

Earl knew Dreier, having been coached by him in seventh grade football, but he was still shocked to find out he was offering to take him in.

But they got the paperwork completed, and Earl lived with Dreier from his sophomore year until he graduated high school. What's more, Dreier served as a father figure for Earl—something he hadn't experienced up until then.

“I never spent three years at one place,” Earl says. “He just gave me every aspect of a dad that I never had.”

Earl went off to college at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he played football and baseball. Then he returned to New London to start his own real estate business.

Dreier, now 69, had planned to stop coaching by now, but Earl implored him to stick around so that he could coach his daughters.

“You gotta keep coaching, you've got to coach my kids,” Dreier recalls Earl saying. “I just said, ‘I can't. I don't think I'll be hanging on that long, Earl.'”

Earl told his girls, “If there's any coach I want you to play for, it would be him.”

Dreier decided to stick it out. Now, he coaches the four daughters of the man he helped raise through his teen years. And his team, with the four Rich girls playing on it, is undefeated.

Not a bad legacy to leave on all fronts, Coach Dreier.

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