Alumni Football Game Aug 2011

This summer I had the pleasure of working with a group of amazing people in order to raise money for a great cause. Originally, I saw a few former classmates post on Facebook about an alumni football game that would be played in August against our former high school rival and it would benefit Cystic Fibrosis.

After re-sharing their event details, I asked if there was anything I could do to help. The two guys in charge of the Oregon City High School Alumni team said to join them and I jumped at the chance. I enjoy volunteering, love football, like to organize, and meeting new people is always fun for me. A lot of my passions rolled into one!

We began in June by having practices twice a week. It would be full contact football and some of our guys were coming straight off the couch. 

Sophia talking football with OC players

The original reason for this game was to raise funds for Cystic Fibrosis. One of the original organizers, Ian, has a daughter with this disease. His great friend, business parter, former teammate, and his daughter's godfather, Trent, thought this would be a great way to have fun, create memories, and most importantly, raise money for Cystic Fibrosis.

They hired an outside company (Alumni Athletics http://alumniathleticsusa.com/contact.php) who would provide uniforms, the general event organization, and some people to help run it on game day. I ended up being the team manager for Oregon City High School's team, but also helped with media updates, game promoting, communication between the printers, both teams, the general public, and more. I created a Facebook event and kept it loaded with pictures to entice people to come to the game.

We set up this website Battle for the bridge for people to purchase tickets online.

We had some great media coverage before and after our event oregonlive and
oregonlive2.
Leading up to game day was a fun experience. I met a lot of families, got in touch with old friends I hadn't seen in many years, and met a lot of wonderful people. 

Before game day, we knew we had at least 1,000 people attending, about 150 people playing or organizing, a combined school dance team for half time entertainment, current cheerleaders for both teams, and a lot of excitement in the air!

Our team, Oregon City High School, ended up with the win on game day, but really, we ALL won. Cystic Fibrosis won with our final event tally raising over $18,000 which went directly to the Oregon chapter. Each team won by creating life long memories and being able to share them with families and friends.

Time with Q

One of my favorite things to do is check out mentally.  I don't do it very often.  I'm a single mother of 2 great smallish people.  There's not a lot of time for that.  I normally have to be on my 'A' game to keep up.

Last night my son needed some time with me.  Let's call him Q.  He normally likes me to play with him because when I play, I build lego structures (for him to destroy in the first 10 minutes) or I come up with new ideas because I don't really want to hold little figures while making "pew, pew, pew" shooting noises.  I talked with him briefly about his day and he showed me some things he'd been making with legos and then immediately changing subjects to the latest configuration of nerf guns.  He loves that there are inter-changeable parts to the guns and always wants to share the latest and greatest creation.

Let's SHOOT!  I picked up one that contained darts with suction cups on the ends and shot the window and TV.  Fun!  That's all it took, he grabbed a nerf gun and joined in.  Suction darts everywhere.  That wasn't good enough...I quickly asked for the "automatic" shooting nerf gun that requires batteries and spits out darts in rapid succession.  I was in the play zone.  I had checked out.  We began strategizing about what the benefits of each gun were and how we could have equally cool guns with similar fire power.  We shot stuffed animals, framed pictures, targets, green army guys, "not the dog!", and each other a few times.  We used our laser sights, reconfigured the guns, and tried to fix one gun that wasn't working to no avail.  Picking up the darts and reloading for future play wasn't AS fun, but it's all part of the game, so we did.

While picking up the nerf darts, I began asking about some tech decks he had laying on the ground and asked if we should make a skate park for them.  Tech decks are tiny skateboards that you maneuver with your fingers.  http://www.techdeck.com/app/website  I'm more of a designer or builder with toys, but my son loves that, because he would rather play with whatever I create...and ultimately destroy it in the process.  We started talking about skate parks (of which he's never actually seen or been to) and I told him we could make one out of the discarded shoe box laying on his bedroom floor.  Let's GO!

We had alreay cleaned up the guns and ammo, so we scooped up the tech decks, the corresponding skateboard ramps, and headed to the kitchen for a little creative time.  I told him about graffiti and how we could decorate the shoe box with pictures we found online.  Enter GOOGLE.  I did a basic search and we chose colorful and interesting (age appropriate) graffiti to print copies of.  We cut them out, glued them in the shoe box, discussed placement of the skate ramps, and secured them with sticky dots.  It was looking good, but something was missing.  Let's PERSONALIZE IT!  I penciled out his name on the skate park floor and filled it with my own amateur rendition of graffiti containing his name.  We were done!  It was cool!  The tech decks had their own space.  We bonded.  Q began thinking ahead to his next sharing day at school and said his friends would be SO jealous of his tech deck skate park.  I was proud he liked it.  I enjoyed the time spent with him.  It may have been a little selfish that I needed to 'check out' from my regular adult duties, but I believe he benefitted from our time spent together.  I really do enjoy hanging out with him and can't wait for our next mom & Q adventure.