Tonight, basketball will be far from Laura Beeman’s concerns.

This Christmas Eve, the University of Hawaii coach will simply be one of the volunteers eager to provide a night of comfort and joy for children lacking much of either the rest of the year.

With the Rainbow Wahine on a holiday break, Beeman and Teneshia Ruff, the program’s director of operations, plan to spend the night before Christmas helping out at “Home for the Holiday,” an overnight event hosted by HomeAid Hawaii to brighten the spirits of homeless youths.

“When I saw those kids last year unwrapping presents and knowing they were going to be able to sleep inside, it was overwhelming emotionally,” Beeman said.

HomeAid Hawaii introduced the event last year as a benefit for Youth Outreach, IHS/Adult Friends for Youth, Next Step Shelter and Family Promise Hawaii. The programs transport participants from Kakaako, Iwilei, Waikiki and Windward Oahu to the event site (the specific location is kept under wraps for security purposes) for a night of food and holiday festivities under the shelter of a safe and carefree environment.

“The other 364 days they’re fighting to survive,” said Nani Medeiros, executive director of HomeAid Hawaii. “When you see them just being kids and not worrying, the excitement, that’s the biggest thing. … that’s what every child deserves.

“Little things like this give them hope.”

Beeman volunteered for last year’s inaugural event and called the experience “life changing.”

“I’ve always taken for granted when I wake up in the morning when I was a kid I was going to have my entire family there. I knew Santa had come down and put tons of presents under my tree and I knew we were going to have a great Christmas breakfast,” she said.

“Growing up, I saw the homeless issue in Hawaii, but I still never thought about what the homeless kids would do on Christmas. I think I wanted to believe that they had some place to go, that there’s no way they would be in a cardboard box or a tent. And then you find out that (on) Christmas Eve that’s exactly where they would go and Christmas was just any other day.”

Medeiros said more than 90 youths are expected to participate in tonight’s Home for the Holiday, which is run entirely on donations and staffed by volunteers. When Medeiros put out the word on social media last year “the community response was huge.”

Rainbow Wahine basketball will again be represented among the corps of volunteers tonight and Beeman, Ruff and freshman Courtney Middap got an early start to the weekend of giving by packing gift bags at the Youth Outreach center in Waikiki on Friday morning.

Beeman connected with Youth Outreach — which offers medical care and social services for homeless teens — shortly after she moved to Hawaii, and Rainbow Wahine players have performed service projects and served internships with the program. The team annually holds a shoe drive on senior night and collected more than 200 pairs to donate to YO last March.

“To be allowed to witness what Youth Outreach does, it’s pretty incredible,” Beeman said. “If the average person were to see that, there would be a lot of people in Hawaii who would not tolerate homelessness.”

Most of the UH roster is off island for Christmas and the Wahine will reunite on Monday for practice as they look to rebound from a 3-8 start. But tonight wins and losses, defense and shooting percentages fade into the background for a few hours.

“When I think about this time of year and what these homeless kids are going through, it keeps me very grounded in the bigger picture of what I do and why I do it,” Beeman said.

“I absolutely want to win … but it keeps me in perspective when I know what I’m going to do on Christmas Eve.”