Christmas Traditions with 2022 Extra Elite 100 Twins Hannah & Lauren Camenzind: Baking 220 Dozen Cookies, Matching PJs, Horse Riding & Softball Workouts!

Hannah and Lauren Camenzind are twin sisters who play for Ryan Taylor’s Aces Fastpitch Club and are both members of the 2022 Extra Elite 100 rankings, each ranking in the Top 20 in their class.

The Arkansas commits also made our 2020 All-Summer Team this year, Hannah because of her impressive pitching and hitting skills and Lauren because of her middle infielder glove, speed and bat.

Longtime fans of theirs, we asked the sisters who are juniors at Skutt Catholic High in Omaha, Nebraska what they enjoy about Christmas… below are their thoughts!

If you would like to share your favorite thoughts, memories or traditions about Christmas or afterwards, what your favorite present was, email us at [email protected]!

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This is a unique year when it comes to being able to celebrate with our family and we consider ourselves fortunate to be able to see most of our family this year due to most of them having had COVID.

We are still softball players, therefore we have to manage our time with family and continuing to get our workouts in during this time. Being out of school on Christmas break does make it easier to have time to spend time with our family and get our workouts done.

Some of our favorite family traditions include getting together with our cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents to bake Christmas cookies.

We have done this every year since we were born—this is a tradition that my great-great grandma and great grandma started and all of our family has continued with the tradition since they are no longer with us. We baked over 220 dozen cookies this year!

On Christmas Eve our parents make dinner (usually prime rib) for our grandparents at our house. We are allowed to open one present and it is always matching Christmas pajamas.

Then Christmas morning we get up and open our presents and our parents make breakfast for any of our family that come over… it is an open invite.

Later that night we have Christmas with my mom’s family, we always play games against our cousins. Like the saran wrap ball game or minute to win it games. It can get very competitive!

Over New Year’s we go to Iowa to see our dad’s family. We always play bingo and do a white elephant ornament exchange. My grandparents in Iowa live on a horse ranch, therefore we get to ride horses, which we used to do a lot of before we started playing softball.

We are very lucky to have an indoor facility about 10 minutes from our house (Elkhorn Training Camp), our home away from home. This is where we do most of our pitching, hitting and defensive workouts.

Since we live in Nebraska. the weather doesn’t allow much to be done outside this time of year. We go there pretty much every day and Christmas break is no different. We will take Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year Day off.

Other than that, we will continue to go work out every day of break. We will actually be heading to Kansas City tomorrow (Wednesday, Dec. 23) for Aces Practice. The work doesn’t stop, always something to work on and get better!

We wish a happy and healthy holiday to everyone and look forward to a better 2021!

We will be spending our New Year’s Eve in Iowa with our family cheering on the Arkansas Razorbacks in the Texas Bowl! Woo Pig!!

— Lauren and Hannah Camenzind