Back at the end of January I flew back to Fredericton (my hometown) to participate in the “Curl for Cancer” event at the Fredericton Curling Club. Curl for Cancer has been going on for quite a while I’m told, but it was only brought to the Fredericton Curling Club starting last year. My understanding is that my dad did a lot last year to get it going, and I know for a fact that he worked very hard for the event this year. Last year my brothers and sister, along with my dad put in a team but sadly I wasn’t able to attend. This year it was all of us kids on a team while my dad played with some of his grandkids.
With respect to curling, our team (Team Haggerty) did as well as I expected us to do – we lost all 4 of our games. That is what happens when you put 4 people who have never curled on a team together. In our defense though, we did show improvement in all of our games. I’m sure we would have won a fifth game if there had been one. :) Regardless of our success on the ice, in my opinion our team definitely came out as the winners.
As I mentioned, I didn’t get a chance to participate last year, but was still very happy to hear that Team Haggerty were the top team fundraisers for the event. I was pretty determined that we’d retain that title this year and so, despite the fact they they didn’t have online sponsor sheets set up for participants this year, I set about hitting up all my friends for donations – just like I said I’d do in my post last year. Thankfully I have very generous friends (thanks again to all those that donated) and not only did our team win top fundraising team again this year (bringing in nearly $3K) – I got the top individual fundraiser title, after bringing in $1230! With that, I realized my ultimate goal for the event, which was beating my brother Mike. I bitched about not having online sponsor sheets – saying I’d be able to raise more if they had them – so next year I’m going to have to find a way to top that number. That could be challenging, but given that I did all my fundraising 2 weeks before the event, perhaps if I start earlier I’ll manage. As for the final amount that was raised by the event – it was somewhere around $19K, which is just slightly higher than last year, but when you consider there were more teams entered last year, that’s pretty good!
The event itself was well run and things went very smoothly throughout the day. There were certainly some things done differently than if I had been running things, but that’s just my opinion. The biggest criticism I had of the event is that the ‘best’ prizes were given out to the ‘winners’ of the curling event and prizes for top fundraisers seemed to be an afterthought. In fact, one of the largest prizes given out was a door prize that anyone was eligible for – you didn’t have to raise one cent for the Canadian Cancer Society in order to get a ticket for the door prize. Don’t get me wrong, this is not me bitching about the prize that I got for being the top individual fundraiser – this is me thinking that in an event like this, if you are going to give out prizes at all, they should go to the people who busted their asses raising money for the charity in question rather than those who happen to be good curlers – it IS a fundraising event afterall. Again, just my opinion and likely not shared by everyone.
I’m looking forward to attending the event next year and winning the top individual fundraiser title again. I think Amy, Liam and Grace will be joining me for the trip next year though – I certainly missed having them there.
If you’re wondering what my prize was – it was a $20 bouquet of flowers, redeemable only at a local flower shop that wouldn’t deliver to Ottawa. Amy will be getting some flowers next time we’re in Fredericton. :)