By Sarah Hall

Editor

Sure, the Bees lost their football game Friday night at home to rival Cicero-North Syracuse, snapping Baldwinsville’s four-game winning streak — and on Senior Night, no less.

But for running back Jack Buis and his family, the night still goes in the “W” column.

Buis’ older sister, Courtney Evers, was at the game Friday to watch her brother play and to walk him onto the field. Evers, a U.S. Navy aircrewman, has been deployed in Hawaii for the last several years.

“I’ve never gotten to see Jack play football, and… this is a really great opportunity [to] get to see him play football for the first time, and it’s just going to be a great night,” Evers said. “[I’m excited to] celebrate him and all his accomplishments this season.”

And Buis didn’t even know she was coming.

Buis and Evers’ mother, Elaine Buis, was able to pull off the surprise with the help of her family and the coaching staff, as well as about a month’s worth of planning. She said she first started working on the Senior Night bombshell around the first day of school.

“You know, when the school opened up for the first day, I called the office immediately, and I said, ‘I need to know when Senior Night is for the football game,’” she said. “It just so happened that, when I was talking to Courtney, she said, ‘Mom, I’m going to be coming home from deployment on the third of October. I could book a flight now, but you have to promise me that it’s not going to be cancelled and moved.’ So we made the reservations, and I just sent out save-the-dates to everybody via text, and I kept sending out little reminders.”

It seemed the stars had aligned—but a little more finagling was necessary. Though Evers’ deployment had ended, she and her husband, Scott, still had to get back from Hawaii.

“We bring our own plane out, and they let me bring that home so that we could make it on time for the game. So the rest of my crew left five days later,” Evers said. “So it was really great. Everyone was all team-player about it. They wanted us to get home for this big night for Jack, so my whole crew knew about Jack’s big Senior Night. It was really cool.”

Nor was Evers the only family member there for Jack’s big night. Elaine Buis said about 30 family members and friends, including Jack’s other two sisters, Emily, a student at the University of Albany, and Stephanie, who lives in Liverpool, were also in attendance. Still, Jack was none the wiser.

“I think that we did a really great job of keeping it a surprise,” Evers said.

Indeed, Jack’s reaction upon seeing Evers was one of elation — his face lit up as he waved to her from the field, though he immediately returned to the work of running drills with the team.

It’s already been quite a year for Jack, who ran in the first touchdown of the season for B’ville on the new turf at Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium. That was the first of 13 touchdowns this season, including one in the game against C-NS.

While she knows he’ll go on to play again in college, Elaine Buis said she’s sorry to see her son’s senior year at B’ville come to an end—though the visit from Courtney presents a fitting cap to his season.

“I’m going to miss all this. This is it. This is it,” she said. “I’m really proud of my son, and just that his sister got to be here and is getting to watch him play — it’s just remarkable.”