The players in the East-West Shrine Game aren’t the only South Coast students involved this week.

Elizabeth Hanson, a past patient at the Shriners Hospital in Portland, is the West queen for the event.

Hanson, who just graduated from Coquille High School and plans to attend Southwestern Oregon Community College, envisions becoming a nurse at a Shrine hospital in the future.

“When I am certain of my skills in nursing, I will work hard to get a job at a Shriners Hospital, because there isn’t a better place I could think of to work,” Hanson wrote in an essay when she applied for the honor of West queen.

“Shriners is an organization that has helped so many people live longer, better lives,” she wrote. “One can’t help but feel amazed at how much they do.”

Hanson was treated at the Shriners Hospital in Portland, where surgeons inserted rods in her back to straighten her spine, lessening the impact of scoliosis.

“I can’t imagine ever going to a different place for my surgery, because I felt safe at Shriners. I never dreamed that there could be a hospital so comfortable and warm.”

Hanson plans to join the local Shrine group and work toward her nursing degree with the goal of eventually working in a Shrine hospital.

“I can only hope that I will be able to return my thanks by giving back, first when I join Bahari at the beginning of next year and when I am able to work at a Shriners hospital,” she wrote.