The hero of today’s story likes to watch cartoons and sing and dance and eat chicken because it gives her muscles. She hates beans. She has curly brown hair, brown eyes, stands about 4 feet tall and of course loves the color purple.
Her name is Emma, she lives in Olathe with her parents and baby sister, and she is an Internet sensation.She is the star of her kindergarten class. Strangers have cheered her. The Kansas State president wrote her a letter, jokingly offered a scholarship for the fall of 2025, and someone in the athletic department sent stickers, a parking pass and four tickets to the nationally televised basketball game against No. 7 Kansas tonight.She will be honored, her face put on the video board, and more than 12,000 like-minded people will roar their approval for perhaps the youngest fan of the game in memory.“OK,” she told her mother, Julie Burton, upon hearing about all of this. “Can I meet Willie?”Maybe you heard about Emma. Her story is making the rounds, word-of-mouth and thousands of hits on a blog her mother says is usually read by “my five little mommy friends.”The story begins in a kindergarten class honoring Kansas Day. They color a buffalo, the state animal. A western meadowlark, the state bird. Some sunflowers. You get the idea.Then a Jayhawk.Now, you should know a little about Emma’s family. Her grandfather went to a small college in Missouri and told his children they could go anywhere they wanted as long as it wasn’t Kansas.Julie chose K-State, where she met Scott Burton. They graduated in 2004 and married shortly after. When Emma was just a baby, she played this game where her parents would say “KU,” she would respond “EWWW!” and when they said “K-State,” she would respond “YAY!!!”She once argued over a coloring book with a little boy in a sporting-goods store about whether KU or K-State was better.So maybe the teacher got caught by surprise when Emma refused to color the Jayhawk. Maybe the teacher got caught by surprise when Emma said she does not like KU, asked for a Wildcat instead, and when there was none took the Jayhawk and threw it in the trash.Julie heard the story from the teacher and tried not to laugh. This is a difficult thing, hearing a hilarious story and being proud of your daughter but also determined not to show up the teacher.So Julie thanked the teacher, took Emma’s hand, wondered what to do and called her husband — who of course laughed and hung up and called his friends. Julie and Scott decided to tell Emma they were proud that she stood up for what she believed in and would not be punished but that she should’ve behaved better. They printed out a Powercat, had her color it and the Jayhawk, and wrote an apology to the teacher.
Emma is a message board star by now. The comments and emails have come in from all over. Julie and Scott have been assured that Mizzou Nation is behind their daughter.And even if an innocent story about a girl in kindergarten isn’t totally immune to the ugly side of sports and the Internet, most KU fans see the humor, too.This story will be told and retold the rest of her life. It’ll be the hit of her wedding. Her EMAW is strong, in K-State lingo. There is no way for Emma to fully grasp what she’s created, of course.Emma will get in the car today and ride two hours with her family to a basketball game. People will hear her story for the first time. They might even mention it on the TV broadcast. K-State administrators will smile and fans will cheer and strangers will offer high-fives.She is part of this rivalry now.
