February 25, 2014 — Hoping everyone enjoyed their President’s Day weekend! I know the staff at The Side-Out Foundation loved interacting with all the teams while promoting participation with Side-Out last weekend in DC. A big thank you to all of the teams who have already begun working hard to raise money for the foundation! We received $2,500 this weekend and had a few teams stop by our booth to pick up their gift bags filled with all sorts of goodies! It was so touching to see the support we have from everyone not just by their fundraising efforts, but also by the sea of pink throughout the convention center on Dig Pink Day! We saw tons of teams with our new Dig Pink Tour shirts!

Just in case you didn’t have a chance to check out our booth, we had a lot of fun festivities going on throughout the weekend. We had minute-to-win-it challenges for teams to participate in, which was a blast to watch. The most popular game amongst the crowd was definitely “junk in the trunk.” This game required the players to attach an empty tissue box to their backside and shake their rump in order to get rid of all the ping pong balls in their tissue box.

However, nothing could beat the amount of traffic we had at the Side-Out photobooth. Players and even coaches relished in our pink photobooth props. Everyone loved the feathery boas, along with a pink tutu of course! A lot of coaches made promises to their players that they would put a tutu on if their team were to win that day. It was definitely hilarious to see grown men dressed up in little pink tutus, pink boas, tiny pink cowboy hats with oversized pink sunglasses on.

On a more serious note, we had great success with our Hospital Cards Project! We had over 730 cards dropped off at our booth (see a list of contributing teams below)! These weren’t just your everyday plain white card made out of a piece of scrap paper either! Some of the designs on the cards were so intricate and beautiful! We can tell that the teams really put a lot of time, thought and effort into these cards, and we would like to thank everyone who took the time to make cards for the patients! We know that they will greatly appreciate it. Because of the large number of cards, we are able to donate to 2 other local hospitals: Sibley Memorial Hospital and Children’s National Medical Center, both in Washington, D.C. The cards are being mailed out this week!

If you didn’t get a chance to stop by the Side-Out booth at Capitol Hill, don’t worry! The Tour will have a few more stops at Colorado Crossroads, MEQ St. Louis, MEQIndianapolis and Big South! Make sure to stop by and check out what we’ve got going on in the booth!

TEAMS THAT CONTRIBUTED CARDS FOR PATIENTS

(If your team donated cards at the Capitol Hill Classic and you don’t see your name listed below, please let us know and we will add them.)

Tori Price

Side-Out Intern