After two years of running a highly successful basketball fundraiser, Mark Schendel, MC Knoll School's boys basketball coach, is thinking even bigger. This year, Schendel decided to run a pink t-shirt campaign that will potentially raise more than $3,000 toward breast cancer treatment in Yorkton.
"We're wearing pink this year," he said. "We have 200 t-shirts in varying sizes that have been ordered. We're encouraging as many people as possible in our wonderful MC Knoll community to buy a pink t-shirt and support the cause."
In the inaugural year, 2010, the boys and girls basketball teams raised $700 for Tele-Miracle by getting pledges and participating in a free throw shoot-a-thon. Last year, a similar event raked in $700 for the Yorkton Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Although the fundraiser is carried out under the auspices of the basketball program, Schendel says it is really a campaign that encompasses the entire MC Knoll community.
"I want to say thank you in advance, before we even get this campaign truly going, to all the wonderful people in the MC Knoll community," he said. "By far and away we have the best school community in the world and I know they're going to rally around a project like this and we're going to raise a lot of money in joining the fight against breast cancer."
Several business owners, who are parents of children in the school, stepped up to fund the t-shirts. The Wagner family of D's Signs and Designs were first on board with a donation of $1,000. From there, Schendel called on four other sponsors, the Cooks of Heartland Fuels, the Schmidts of Schmidt Homes, the Shyiak's of McDonalds and the Mandziuk's of Fox FM, who each put up $500.
"Every single cent from the sales will go to breast cancer," Schendel said.
The Health Foundation of East Central Saskatchewan will administer the funds. Ross Fisher, executive director, says it allows the health region to provide extra support to cancer patients above and beyond what medicare covers.
"We'll put it into the cancer care programs that we have," he said.
Those programs include chemotherapy and palliative care.
The campaign will run all the way through the basketball season, the premier event of which is the annual Valentine's Day Battle of the Genders game in which the MC Knoll boys play the Yorkton Regional High School junior girls.
In addition to t-shirt sales, the teams will be accepting donations all season.
The shirts are $15 and available through the school.
