Business, pleasure and football lies ahead this Mom’s Weekend for two WSU mothers aiming to continue building and expanding the Cougar football family.

Tracy Cracraft, the mother of senior wide receiver River Cracraft, and Jill Osur-Myers, the mother of redshirt freshman offensive lineman Noah Osur-Myers, created CougFam one year ago. The organization, comprised only of parents and close relatives who are Cougar Athletic Fund members, was founded on the premise of connecting current families on the football team to make life easier.

“That’s our Cougar football family,” Tracy Cracraft said. “It’s not just for the mom’s, it’s for the parents and families of the football players. We have tailgates on the practice fields, near the alumni tents, for every home game. And then for all the away games we try to coordinate travel plans for people to get group rates in the same hotels.”

WSU Athletic Director Bill Moos appointed Mitch Stiltjes, a program assistant with the Cougar Athletic Fund, to coordinate between the two groups. Friday, Cracraft and Osur-Myers will have a meeting with Mitch to discuss packages for CougFam, among other things.

But the benefit to being a Cougar parent is the experience and once-in-a-lifetime moments that come from it, in the eyes of Cracraft.

“The best part is just constant fun. It’s a constant party that never ends,” Cracraft said with a chuckle. “It really is. The saying ‘there’s no offseason in football, well there’s none for us either. We’re all so supportive of our kids and each other and everyone’s kids, it’s great and really fun.”

This Mom’s Weekend for the Cracraft’s and Osur-Myers’s will be just like every other day of life, different than normal with football integrated into each day. However, that slim one percent that is normalcy will include taking in The Band Perry at Beasley Coliseum, as well as a nice family dinner out on the Palouse.

“Yeah it is pretty different because 99 percent of what’s going on we don’t do, because we are so busy,” Cracraft said. “There’s a practice tomorrow [Thursday] at 3:30, so a lot of mom’s will go watch that. And then on Friday we are all going to the women’s football clinic. So we’re going to do that from 5-8:30 [p.m.] and then the next day [Saturday] we have a scrimmage around 11 a.m.”

Football brought the CougFam together. This weekend, it’s about coming together to enjoy some of their last practices as parents of student-athletes.