Perhaps no one brings as much joy to the current University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s basketball team as Sarah Owona.
The Mocs visited Disneyland after playing two games in California on Thanksgiving weekend, and nobody in the UTC camp — nobody — was more excited about the opportunity to visit the Anaheim amusement park than Owona.
“I think Sarah might be the most excited,” fellow junior guard Caia Elisaldez, who is from California, said prior to the trip. “She was like, ‘Guys, if you want me to, don’t worry, I’ll buy (mouse) ears for everyone today.’ And we told her she should just buy them there, and she said, ‘So I have to wait?'”
In her defense, it was Owona’s first trip to both the Golden State and the 70-year-old attraction that launched Disney and Mickey Mouse into the the theme park universe, so the excitement was understandable. On top of that, Owona is from Opvelp, Belgium — she transferred to UTC after two seasons in the junior-college ranks at Florida SouthWestern State — and is one of two international players on UTC’s 2025-26 roster, with senior Frode Flos van der Schans from the Netherlands the other.
Being quite a ways away from home means Owona has to find joy sometimes in the little things (like an amusement park with a cartoon mouse as its thematic foundation, and in this, she seems to have succeeded.