October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month
and for nearly a decade now the Forty-Niners volleyball team has participated
in the national Dig Pink Campaign
to raise funds for breast cancer research.
Dig Pink is
just that crazy fun event in October where
we get the whole campus involved and
the whole team is just
ready to raise tons of money. And I know last year we raised just over $10,000 dollars
and just a lot of fun to get everyone involved.
I believe it's the eleventh year. Lisa Marston the former head coach started
it because of uh... her mother had breast cancer
and uh... it actually is
a phenomenal thing across the country every
every high school program or just about every high school program, or club program
will go to a tournament
a thousand teams will be wearing pink on Saturday
uh... it's big and when I got here they were raising money
you know a couple thousand here a couple thousand there. I kind of was like well if we're going to do it let's
do it big and you know I'm kind of an ideas guy and get after it a little bit 0:01:04:240,0:01:08:200 it's turned into a huge event and we brainstormed over the years and we've come up with some good things
we go down to carolina panthers and go out for the tailgate and
solicit donations. We usually separate into two groups. It gets into a little bit of a
competition to see who can raise the most money
we walk around
people playing cornhole, trying to get us to play with them
you know, walking around the tailgate stands
and just talking to people and they tell us about their past experiences or how
they're breast cancer survivors so it's just great to hear their stories. We do a
jail and bail where we lock people up on campus, prominent people
our football coach got locked up last year and he might get locked up again this
year if we can finagle it
I think the funniest part or the most memorable for me was whenever my coach
was in jail and bail and people had to try to pay to get him out
we've just tried a lot of different ideas and it's been a lot
of fun to do
you know we've got online donation which has really helped raise more money and
we keep trying to different things you know we've tried to give them to uh...
have a text to donate we haven't gotten that yet but we're always pushing for new and
different ideas.
It's definitely a pinnacle home match for us uh... eighteen hundred people
which is a single match record
we've only had one match ever
bigger and that was with a basketball double header so this year we're
really besides trying to be number one again, besides trying to raise more money
we'd like to set the home attendance record about 2,100 people
so that's kind of
we've got a lot of different goals coming out of that match. The atmosphere is crazy
the whole bowl is painted pink
like there's a ton of people there. It's really exciting
feeding off the crowd's energy. The locker room turns
all into pink. We have pink jerseys
ribbons, shoelaces, everything
it's just fun to
really go out and support the cause
and just get all dressed up and have fun.
I mean we've had over eighteen hundred people the last two years
we were second and then first in the country uh... the last two years as far
as raising money of all division one two three programs the girls
you know from a community service standpoint uh... go out and do something and
affect people's lives and that's important to me in the community service area
I know this cause really hits home with a lot of people and breast cancer awareness and everyone
always has that one person they can think of and
makes them want to donate even more every year so that's
really a good cause for everyone and I think we can all come out and show big
support for it.
