Sensastional fund raiser for breast cancer at our junior football club

[lisa_spyder]

Yesterday the Colts junior football club (I am the secretary and team manager for under 12's) took part in the annual Victorian Country Football League Pink Footy and Netball Day. We are a small club of about 45 families and we lack player numbers in our under 12s and under 14s. We may even be the smallest club in our League. A lot of our families are battlers...

I threw the Colts in the deep end with a massive challenge - to be the headline club in our League for this event. We hosted a pink pancake breakfast before the games yesterday and invited our local Federal Member of Parliament, the Mayor, the CEO of our Shire and all the female executive officers, League and club life members, representatives from the Victorian Country Football League, School principals etc etc...

We spent HOURS scrubbing and decorating the clubhouse, sprucing the ground, linemarking in pink etc. Everyone turned out in pink, cooked everything we could think of in pink for the canteen. The older sisters set up a pink stand and did pink hair, nails, facepainting etc. We raffled a pink breast cancer football, we rattled collection tins, we sold breast cancer caps...the small Colts army were in full swing.

I managed to get the local tv crews along, the local press etc...the VIPs all looked for ways to create photo opportunities involving our kids and put themselves out to do so (yes I know they gain from this too - but they didn't have to do it).

Our VIP list all stayed to watch the under 10s game...our Mayor stayed to watch them all. I was absolved of my team manager duties yesterday and was sent forth to network for the Colts and to manage the PR (and fix a hundred small things that inevitably went wrong on the day)...like everyone involved I was run off my feet!

A group of players from our local senior football side came along with their head coach and their development officer. We only had to ask the players to help our u12s warm up and they were up and at it (kids were positively inspired)!

Last night Mike and I sat down to 'do the count'...the Colts JFC with support of the opposition team families raised - wait for it.....over $1000.00!!!!

To say I am proud of our efforts is a massive understatement...I saw Mums and Dads who usually never lift a finger yesterday raising a sweat for their kids' footy club. I saw individuals who usually never speak working alongside each other happily.

I cannot wait for training on Wednesday night when I get to announce how much we raised for Breast Cancer Network Australia and to congratulate the Colts for displaying how we truly are the 'family' club in our League.

We lost BTW...in fact our under 14s were positively thumped...our opposition were bigger, faster, stronger...very physical to the point that our under 12s playing 'up' dribbled off the ground during the second half too exhausted to play on (Billy included). But we will continue to work on this through the season...and because of yesterday and all the talking/actioning I made our president do we'll have the help of our senior football side leading players and coaches starting immediately!

[jyl]

lisa, you are a serious pistol. (That's a good thing.)