MOSCA – The Sangre de Cristo boys basketball team has already got into the holiday spirit as it will be distributing Thanksgiving gift food boxes to less fortunate families in the Mosca and Hooper community.

“We’re sending to families in need in the community,” said Sangre coach Rod Clayton. “Not specific to Sangre School, but to the community. The boys generated the money, did the shopping and put the boxes together. It’s really cool.”

Clayton also did his part as he matched every dollar the basketball team brought by the players.

“I matched whatever money they brought in and we took the rest out of our basketball fund to have any balances that were left,” Clayton said. It’s a good opportunity to be able to help people and serve other people. When you have an opportunity to help, it’s important. That’s what I’ve been trying to teach the boys. It’s a little more than basketball.

“I told them when you play basketball, you win games and lose games,” Clayton added. “But when you do this, you win every time. That’s what we’re doing and we’re hoping it’s a mainstay for the program, year in and year out.”

The Thunderbird basketball team has already started to distribute baskets and it will continue into next week.

“These will be distributed (Thursday) and we’ll have five more go out at the beginning of the week,” Clayton said. “These have to go out because there’s perishables in them. The rest are a timing thing and we’re not going to give them out until next week. We have a few more to do.”

All types of food will be in the gift boxes.

“There’s ham in there,” Clayton said. “There’s pumpkin pies, there’s vegetables, there’s lettuce, there’s rolls, and there’s lemonade to have something to drink. There’s everything in there for a Thanksgiving dinner. We tried to target a family of five. Obviously, there will be less members, and they’ll have more and we didn’t want to get into that. It’s a pretty good box.”