The Christmas season is often one of the most joyous times of the year.  Families gather together to celebrate the birth of Christ while enjoying the blessings of fellowship, food and rest.  For college students, it's a time to take a break from their classes while enjoying some mental and physical refreshment.  In 2023, though, Geneva track and field thrower Allison Standish and her family found it a far different scenario.

Allison is the oldest of five children, growing up in central New York.  As she neared the end of her high school career, her initial plan was to attend college locally.  However, the country was just coming out of the COVID pandemic, and there were still significant restrictions on education and college life that the state was employing, so she decided to look outside New York to continue her education.  She visited Geneva and really enjoyed her trip.

"I toured Geneva and really liked it," says Allison.  "I could really feel the strong community when I visited, and I felt it would be a good place for me where I could grow a lot.  So, I committed to Geneva but wasn't sure I was going to participate in a sport, even though I grew up participating in dance, soccer and track."

As her high school education wrapped up, though, she wasn't ready to bring a close to her athletic career, so she reached out to Phil Thompson, Geneva's head track and field coach, who encouraged her to join the team when she arrived on campus.

It didn't take long for her athletic talents to make an early impact on the track and field team.  Coach Thompson had given Allison a summer routine to follow prior to arriving on campus, and she saw immediate improvement from those workouts.  In her very first indoor meet at Youngstown State, she broke the school record in the weight throw, beating her personal best from high school by over six feet.

By the time her freshman year wrapped up, she had established herself as one of the top throwers in the Presidents' Athletic Conference, and she was excited about the years ahead.

The first semester of her sophomore year proved to be challenging, though.  She battled through an injury in preseason training.  She also came down with pneumonia as the semester moved along, setting her training back, and over Thanksgiving break her beloved family dog passed away.  As the semester ended and she headed home over Christmas break, Allison was looking forward to some much-needed rest and recovery, while spending time with her family.

(Allison with her family.)

Christmas day went smoothly, as her family enjoyed time together, eating good food and opening presents.  As the day wrapped up, the family started heading upstairs to go to bed, and Allison followed suit around 11:00 p.m., leaving one of her brothers as the last one still awake downstairs.  She began to nod off 30 minutes later, but she was startled back awake by the sound of the fire alarm going off.  She got back up and went downstairs to find her younger brother coming up from the basement with a fire extinguisher while talking on the phone with the 911 operator.  There was already smoke starting to come up through the vents, so Allison hurried back upstairs to wake up her family and to alert them of the pending danger.

By the time she got everyone up and down the stairs, the smoke was starting to fill the first floor, and everyone quickly evacuated.  Her parents grabbed the car keys so they could move the cars away from the house, and then they quickly filtered across the street to wait for the fire department to arrive.

It took several minutes for the firemen to arrive, a span that seemed much longer in the moment.  A few neighbors began to emerge from their houses as the fire trucks arrived, and it was past midnight by the time the firemen began to battle the blaze.  Good friends of the Standishes who lived a couple houses down took the younger children into their home while the firemen worked.

A little after 1:00 a.m., it appeared the fire was out.  The department later determined that an ember from the first floor fireplace somehow made its way down a chute into the basement, landing on some cardboard or other paper, which started the fire.  An investigator went in while the firemen put away their gear to confirm the fire was indeed out.  Unfortunately, as he began to check out the inside, the fire restarted, and it quickly grew to engulf the whole house.  It took a few minutes for the firefighters to get their gear back on and their equipment back out, and by that time it was clear the house was going to be a complete loss.  It was almost 4:00 a.m. by the time the fire was completely out, and the remaining family members that were still watching from across the street sat in silence.

"I remember that moment really vividly," recalls Allison.  "That was a rough moment.  My parents and my brother and I were just sitting in our cars across the street as we watched our house burn in front of us."

(The Standish's living room after the fire.)

Those four eventually made their way over to their neighbor's house, but as expected, no one slept much in the remaining hours left before the sun came back up.  The family returned to what was left of their home once it was daylight, looking for anything that might have survived the fire, which wasn't much.  Allison grabbed her wallet, which was burned but still held her salvageable driver's license.  She also grabbed the box that contained her much-needed new laptop that she received as a Christmas gift less than 24 hours earlier.  A spur-of-the-moment decision she made the previous day to not to pull the laptop out but to leave it in its original packaging allowed the laptop to survive, as the packaging protected the laptop from any extensive damage other than a slightly burned cover.  It was a small blessing in the midst of great destruction.

The Standish's extended family and church pastor showed up early at the house that morning as well, along with several other church members, to help begin the process of recovering what they could out of the burned home.  Allison didn't stay long, instead heading to the local Wal-Mart with her grandmother to purchase some basic necessities, since all they had were the pajamas they were wearing when they went to bed the prior night.

The following day, the family made the transition to Allison's grandparents' house about 30 minutes away.  Allison had less than ten days left before she needed to return to Geneva, so they spent the next several days trying to get things she needed to return to school, as well as things the family needed going forward.

"I was really nervous to go back to school," Allison recalls.  "This was such a traumatic thing to have happen, and to leave my family behind while they were dealing with so much hardship was really difficult.  And how was I going to focus on my academics, and my athletics, while I knew my family was struggling?"

It didn't take long for the Geneva community, and particularly the track and field team, to hear of the fire.  As soon as she got back to campus, the track team combined funds to help Allison purchase additional things she needed for college that were lost in the fire.  The family also felt the support of their communities back home, and a GoFundMe link was created that raised over $30K to help cover some costs, supported by their church, their family and friends, their community, and the Geneva community.

"My friends here were so supportive, and Coach T was really supportive as well," says Allison.  "One of my best friends on the team, Emma Jackman, really became an advocate for me on campus, making sure my professors and community were aware of the challenges I was going through so I could get the support I needed."

The following spring semester was a challenge for Allison.  She struggled with motivation and focus at times, both in the classroom and on the track, knowing her family was still dealing with so much.  But she learned to trust the Lord it the midst of her struggles.

"I really understood during that time my need to completely rely on the Lord," says Allison.  "I was dealing with so much loss, but I also found out that the Lord was going to be my comfort and strength.  He taught me that I have to keep my eyes on Him, even as I dealt with sadness."

Her family spent the next several months living both at her grandparents' house, along with two different rental properties, before finding a house to purchase in the fall of 2024.  The house needed a lot of work, but Allison's father is a contractor, and her brothers are also skilled in construction, so they spent the next two months spending all of their available free time working on the house.  Allison even spent time over Fall Break and Thanksgiving Break helping with the upgrades.  Five days before Christmas, the family moved into their new home, with still lots of work to be done, but also in a very livable condition with the recent work the family had completed.

Last Christmas was understandably tough, though.  Many memories from the prior year came back to the forefront, and their new house still didn't feel like home yet.  The family was so new in the house, and there was still work left to be done.

"I think this upcoming Christmas is going to be really good for my family," says Allison.  "Last Christmas was rough.  Our new house didn't feel like our home.  We were very grateful for the new house and to have walls around us and a bed to sleep in, but it wasn't home yet."

After this Christmas, Allison will be just a few months away from finishing her Geneva degree, and her plan is to head home after graduation to open a food truck with her father.  The family has a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and Allison will use her marketing degree to help build up the business.  She's already been doing some preparatory work for the future company in her classes, using those plans to complete projects in her business courses.

Prior to that, though, Allison is excited for her final semester, especially for her final track and field season.  She has goals to win the conference title in her throwing events, extending the school records she already holds.  All of those things are shaped, though, by the fire that she and her family have walked through, with the Lord walking faithfully beside them through those trials.

"When I look back on the last two years, I see God's fingerprints everywhere. Losing my home in the fire shook me in ways I didn't expect, but it also pushed me into a deeper trust in the Lord's provision. Geneva's community walked with me through some of my hardest days and reminded me that I was never alone. The past two years haven't been easy, but they've been full of growth. God used heartbreak to build strength in me, and I'm grateful for how far He's carried me."