Hortonville Girls Hoops Club partners with area business
By Scott Bellile
T-shirts memorializing Hortonville teen Emily Nickel were so well received in the community that a local athletic club now have basketball headbands in production.
The Hortonville Girls Hoops Club have partnered with Fox Cities Embroidery and SlipNot Headware to manufacture purple headbands as a second way to fundraise for Emilyโs family.
Fox Cities Embroidery owner Jill Kramer said headbands go on sale Friday, Oct. 30 at her store, located at 251 E. Main St. in Hortonville. Each headband will cost $15, and all money not used to cover the costs for material and printing goes to the Nickel family.
Nickel family friend Robin Kolarik said she initiated the headbands as a tribute to Emilyโs athletic side. Emily played basketball on Hortonvilleโs JV team and likely would have played varsity this winter.
The headbands are purple because purple was Emilyโs favorite color. Theyโre stitched with the message โBe you (heart)โEmy,โ in Emilyโs actual handwriting. The message was lifted from a marker board at home after her death.
Nickel, 16, died Sept. 25 in a one-vehicle rollover on School Road in Greenville. She was a passenger. Three girls inside the vehicle were injured.
โHortonville really pulls together as a community,โ Kramer said. โThatโs the great thing, I guess, about being a small town.โ
Kolarikโs goal is to see every female basketball player in Hortonville wear the headband, but she said sheโd love to see boys wear them as well.
โThe more that sell, the more that will help the Nickel family,โ Kolarik said.
In addition to designing headbands, Kolarik said she hopes to hold an annual spring three-on-three basketball tournament in memory of Emily.
T-shirts
Tribute T-shirts remain available through Fox Cities Embroidery for $10 each. Proceeds go to the Nickel family.
โI think [the T-shirt] helps to keep her memory alive because she was pretty involved in the community, and a lot of kids knew her,โ Kramer said.
Kramer said 350 tribute T-shirts have been sold to date. More than 300 sold in the first hour of the Homecoming 2015 football game.
The Nickel family approached Fox Cities Embroidery with the idea. They wanted to memorialize Emily in a way that students and family could see her smiling face.
The shirts feature on the front Emilyโs photo and on the back another handwritten message of hers: โThe true key to happiness is to love who you are. Be you. โEmyโ. The statement was Emilyโs own saying, Mark said.
โIt was her belief,โ Emilyโs father Mark said, โand we wanted to honor that by putting it on [the shirt], about people being themselves … Many kids said that Emily put a smile on their face and told them to be themselves.
โWeโre just honoring Emily,โ Mark tearfully explained. โShe was a very special girl. We loved her.โ