The Iowa Falls-Alden Student Council hosted Strikeout Cancer Night to help raise money for American Cancer Society at Cadets softball and baseball games Friday night against Hampton-Dumont-CAL.
IFA Student Council Faculty Advisor Cassie Wray says the council adjusted the structure of the fundraiser to work during a summer event and the community response was huge.
“We’ve done a lot of cancer events in the past with basketball and other sports, and that’s a different area because it’s indoor, it’s during the school year, it’s a little different,” says Wray. “When we did this one, we looked at a different way to approach the fundraising. We actually reached out to businesses in our community to come and sponsor an inning. I think it turned out to be a great success. We had so many people sign up to sponsor that we ended up having to double sponsor innings. The response from the community was huge. It was really awesome to come out tonight and just to see so much pink out at the games. Seeing more people here then in the past was an awesome thing.”
Wray says students were invested at every stage of the event to achieve the goal of bringing awareness.
“To have students come to me and say, this is something we want to do to bring more awareness to some of our summer sports, that was awesome. A bunch of the softball girls, they all planned, they wore pink socks and pink belts. It was fun to find ways for everyone to be included.”
Wray says the team is in the planning stages for events during Fall sports and the ultimate goal is to host an event during each season.
“Before school got out, some of the kids were already talking about, looking at a volleyball and a football game. They’re back to back, so we’re hoping to have an all week event. That takes place in October so it’ll align very well with breast cancer awareness. I’m really hoping that based on the success of this, that we can do something similar to this again for volleyball, football, and get to a point where we almost have it every season, to really round out the year.”
The event raised around $1,500 for the American Cancer Society with more donations still being added.
