Alexander Shun

Web Editor Associate | @alexpshun 

Minnesota Lynx fans show up every game and support their team, loud and proud. The Target Center can get pretty loud on gameday, so much so that the Lynx were voted by WNBA general managers as having the best home-court advantage in the league. This is due almost entirely to the great support of Lynx fans; proving that having great support can do amazing things.

So, last Friday night, while the Lynx were beating the Chicago Sky, the team took a moment to recognize an organization that has been very good about providing support for others.

The Firefly Sisterhood is a non-profit organization that fosters one-to-one connections for support, guidance and hope between breast cancer survivors and women recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

Started just over a year ago, Firefly has matched 90 w omen in the last nine months with what they refer to as “guides.”

“There are individuals who will serve as guides who volunteer in that capacity and find out about Firefly in a number of different ways,” said Teresa Biss, a board member and guide with Firefly. “They are trained and so forth, and in addition, the match process really looks at the specific elements of a newly diagnosed individual and attempts to do the matching with someone who has a similar experience in terms of procedure, background, that sort of thing. So it’s a very specific match process.”

Firefly started when Biss, along with Board of Directors Erica Jensen, were working for Yoplait and looking for new and different ways to touch women impacted by breast cancer. They came up with many different ideas but eventually decided that support, along with one-on-one connections, were the biggest needs.

“Sometimes your parents and your spouse and your siblings and your best friends and your doctors can’t give you the attention and support that you need,” Jensen told Lynxbasketball.com. “They can’t relate to the situation that you’re in, so we knew there was a need.”

Such great organizations are always needed and, despite being just Minneapolis-based right now, Firefly Sisterhood Executive Director Kris Newcomer says there are big plans to expand nation-wide in the future.

“We want to be national because we know this is a need across the country. So we work in the seven-county metro-area now and we’re looking at expanding state-wide to other cities, and then eventually nationwide.”

The Minnesota Lynx recognized all the greatness that Firefly Sisterhood provides to Minnesota, and eventually will provide nationwide, and chose to provide such an organization with a generous grant.

Lynx Director of Business Operation Carley Knox, joined by Newcomer and Jensen, took a moment in the second quarter of the game so that Knox could present the ladies and the Firefly Sisterhood with a check for $5,000.

“It feels really redeeming, in terms of both the quality of work that we’re doing and then how we’re serving the community in a differential way,” said Jensen when asked about the importance of pairing with an organization like the Minnesota Lynx.

For us it just gives us a lot of credibility and a lot of hope for the future to have somebody like the Lynx recognize the work we’re doing and help us fund our organization so that we can do more work and reach more people and touch more women with breast cancer.”

Though all the ladies of Firefly are proud of the work they do and will continue to do, each admit that it is truly the guides of Firefly Sisterhood and the individuals that those guides connect with, that makes what Firefly does so great.

“The inspiration of the story is complemented by the inspiration of the individuals themselves who choose to serve as guides and, more importantly, the individuals who are so inspiring and who have just been diagnosed and are working through the challenges.”