They have suggested we do a HUGE Pamper session and rather than the money go to the host of the event, the commission raised from sales will go to Play for a Cure.  We couldn’t agree more – who wouldn’t like to get pampered for a night, buy some lovely things and be left with a donation to our charity?

If you like Body Shop products, and would like to pamper yourself whilst helping us with our cause, come along.  Downey Park Clubhouse at 7pm on the 10th February.  You can ensure you are looking your best before our Yellow Socks Softball Challenge the next day!

If you would like to know more details, click here.

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Working with us, these young boys dedicated the weekend to raising funds for breast cancer.  Local business Buddy’s Fire Sales & Services sponsored the Pink Panthers $5.00 for every try scored and the Rockhampton Touch Association kicked started their fundraising with a $50.00 donation.

Looking “pretty in pink”, with profits from the purchase of their socks also going towards their fundraising efforts, the Pink Panthers scored a very impressive 30 tries over the weekend in tough Rocky summer conditions.  Walking the fields with their breast cancer buckets they received donations of over $580.00!  Buddy’s Fire Sales & Services continued their generous support with another $155.00 donation helping the St Anthony’s Pink Panthers to raise an amazing $1,000.00.

A great achievement for these young boys with the help of such wonderful community spirit!

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Post note – with this final amount coming in, Play for a Cure Foundation has raised over $2100 for Breast Cancer Awareness  during the month of October and the first week of November.

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A Tupperware display was put on and true to form it proved popular with over $600 in sales.  Rather than getting a host gift, we took the option of getting $10 donated for every $100 in sales meaning we got a further $60 for our cause.

Brisbane Office raised just under $200 and with Sydney chipping in with $178 and online and direction donations totalling $525, AAPT’s Pink Day In raised $898.

Along with Pink Panther Day, Play for a Cure successfully raised over $1100 in October – Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

This also means we have hit the magical $30000 mark – all before the foundation officially turns 1!

So thank you to each and every one of you who has helped make this possible!  Feels good to know you are making a difference, doesn’t it:)

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This event was held last year and again the Panthers Club got into the spirit by wearing their pink socks to raise awareness of breast cancer.  Saints softball club A1 also participated, looking sharp in their hot pink socks – thank you ladies!

Downey Park, softball and fundraiser = rain!  Saturday was no different.  An all day BBQ was planned, however junior fixtures were washed out, effectively wiping out the morning BBQ.  So we relied on the afternoon being a hit, and all was going great guns until, you guessed it, the rains came through again – and not just light rain!  We packed up early, but not before raising over $200 – due mainly to hamburger sales and the campaigning of Taylor Dunn.   Taylor, only 7, stayed with Leigh all day taking the money for burgers, selling cupcakes and pink P4AC wristbands.  Her older sister, Bron joined her later and they walked around the park asking for donations.  Thank you girls, especially Taylor, you were an amazing help!

October is Breast Cancer awareness month – donations will be accepted all month at this link.  Please help us make a difference.  All donations $2 and over are Tax deductible.

To check out the photos from the day, click here.

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Play for a Cure are also getting into the PINK with the following activities lined up to raise funds for this very important cause: –

Once again AAPT are getting on board with Play for a Cure, and each state (Vic, NSW and Qld) are getting into the spirit and conducting a Pink Day In! AAPT are encouraging staff to get their best pink gear out, with the best dressed pink member winning a $50 Myer voucher.  Each state are running an event where money raised will be donated to Breast cancer research.

Brisbane Panthers Softball Club are having a Pink Panther Day.  Team players will wear pink socks, raising awareness of Breast Cancer, and conduct an all day BBQ at Downey Park with funds raised, like AAPT’s Pink Day In, going to Breast cancer research.

Whilst the cure has not yet been found – there is always hope!  Help keep the hope of a cure alive and donate to by clicking on this link.  All donations $2 and over are tax deductible.

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In all cases to date we have been able to write a letter, enclosing a cheque, when donating.  It is still a great thrill to be able to sign the cheque, but even more so when we were presented with the chance to hand the cheque over in person!

As all of our followers would be aware, Grace and Sienna raised over $1600 for us when they competed in the Junior Dash at the Gold Coast Marathon.  In consultation with the girls and their mother, Ange, we decided to donate the funds raised to CanTeen.

P4AC made contact with the CanTeen branch in Fortitude Valley, and like us they were excited to meet.  Grace and Sienna were on school holidays and so the date was set for the 21^st September.

The girls arrived, looking beautiful, and CanTeen showed us through the branch office as well as showing us a short video of the work they do.  Truly wonderful and inspiring.

Bandana day is on the 28^th October, and the CanTeen volunteers were working madly to pack the bandanas to allow distribution.  We were taken out back and Grace, Sienna and Ange were able to pick their favourite coloured bandana and they all promptly put them on!

The girls were very keen to present the cheque to CanTeen, so we head out to the CanTeen Member’s area and the presentation was made.

CanTeen advised that the funds received from Play for a Cure Foundation will assist in 3 CanTeen camps – once you know what these camps do for CanTeen members, you will understand how proud it made us all feel.

During our farewells, Grace was already telling us of her plans for her next fundraising adventure.  How lucky are we to be associated with such a wonderful family.  To the Sunley’s – thank you!  To CanTeen – keep up the great work you do – you’re amazing!

Please check out the following links to read on about CanTeen and National Bandana Day.

CanTeen

National Bandana Day

Special mention to Grace and Sienna for their efforts in fundraising for Play for a Cure Foundation.  Although both girls competed, only one could be nominated for Quest News Young Star Award.  We are very pleased to announce that Grace was nominated and won the Community award for the month of August – how very exciting for the girls!

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Softball Queensland, who kindly managed our merchandise for the weekend, have come back with a final figure after completing the stock take.  $866!

Taking into account this amount, and final figures tallied, our total raised for the SQ Masters weekend is $4573.40.  Oh so close to the $5000 target – brilliant work everybody!  From P4AC to the community who supported us – we are very proud of this amount and look forward to presenting cheques to the receipients.

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Another SQ Masters has come and gone and it was a huge success in both aspects in which Play for a Cure participated.

We must start, with a huge thank you to Wynnum Manly Leagues Club for sponsoring our team. This enabled the players to concentrate on playing and fundraising without having to worry about any financial outlay. An absolutely brilliant sponsorship and for one we are very grateful!

As the weekend contains two elements, we will break down each event below

Fundraising

It’s no secret that fundraising for cancer research is our number one priority and we believe that our efforts this weekend were again a success!

Over the weekend we sold raffle tickets – 2 separate raffles.

One was a large party pack hamper which consisted of a large wheelbarrow, kindly donated by Bunnings Cannon Hill, filled with all sorts of goodies to make any party a fun one! Thanks to Bunnings and to the players in the team who donated the goods, or sourced goods through other businesses.

Money raised from this raffle is to go to our Trust Fund Account for Cody and Abby McCullagh. Cody and Abby are the children of our dear friend Joey, who passed away in May this year, and who we played in honour of.

Congratulations to Jo for winning this raffle!

Our 2^nd raffle was a personalised P4AC softball glove, in our cool colours of Black, White, Red and Grey. We also had an Australian Spray Jacket, kindly donated by former Olympian Haylea Petrie.

Congratulations to Sista for winning.

Both ladies were pretty excited about their respective wins. Thank you to Nikkie, Joey’s sister for doing the draw.

Our biggest event was hosting the Bledisloe Cup Viewing. All Blacks v Wallabies! People came to watch the game, get a lucky door prize raffle ticket, munch on a burger and have a few drinks. We also sold raffle tickets on the night for some scrumptious seafood raffles. The night was a great success, although the Wallaby supporters might beg to differ! The event was only 3 hours long and we raised close to $3000 for the night – that’s success! Thank you to the players and friends who turned up, especially with those aching bones – obviously the night would not have been a success without you!

We must thank the following for helping make the night the success it was!

Softball Queensland, Logan City Softball Association (Mick and Marg Gorman), Meakin Park Junior Sports Association (Dawn, Shane and Kim), Perry’s Fruit Market, Brumby’s Wynnum West, All Food Services Manly, Australian Rugby Union , Princess Charlotte Seafoods, Woolworths and Coles.

And to the P4AC team members who came out, even though tired and aching, to help set up and help make the night run smoothly. And to Kingy – who is far too young to be a master, but stayed and tirelessly ran around to help.

So in summary, the weekend was a success – we raised around $3800 – now Bowel Cancer research and Cody and Abby McCullagh will benefit.

Please click on the links above, of the businesses that have kindly assisted with our fundraising, we encourage you to visit them and pay them back their kindness.

Competition

I think it is fair to say we set a high standard last year, when we won, in our first attempt, the Div 1 title. True, we have a great team, filled with former Olympic players and International Players and National representatives. We do not, however, have an established pitcher who pitches our games. Fundraising is our main aim, but the competitive fire still burns in us all, so even without a pitcher we expect to win.

We were scheduled for 6 round robin games and potentially 2 final games. So you can imagine our horror, when in the first 2 minutes of the first game, Narelle broke her foot. We only had 10 players for the weekend so with Narelle out and some players still having to work we were going to have to either find pick up players or forfeit. Narelle bravely battled on and played the first 3 games for us (Friday) and provided quite a lot of entertainment in her efforts in making it around the bases when she did get a safe hit!

First day completed we won 2 out of 3, suffering our first loss at the hands of Marist.

Come Saturday we were able to rest Narelle and we won 1 from 2, losing to Renegades.

Sunday morning we had our final game which we needed to win to ensure we made the finals. We won which meant we had to face Marist again in the preliminary final to be able to have a chance in defending our title. Marist inflicted P4AC’s first ever defeat on them, so we were prepared for a hard game. We won, and won well – simply put our bats were on fire – final score 22-2.

This meant we were playing Renegades for the gold medal, the team we defeated last year to take home the gold. Renegades had their own Olympian in Fiona Timu and she was put on the mound to face our mighty line up. Fiona did what was asked for her and some great fielding by her team ensured that P4AC did not defend their title going down 5-1 in a closely fought game. Congratulations Renegades – we look forward to the next battle.

Congratulations to Haylea Petrie, Kim Cooper, Tracy Bailey (on debut) and Brooke Wilkins for making the All-Star Team. We already knew they were stars but always nice to be acknowledged by your peers – well done ladies.

So that wraps up our SQ Masters tournament – really in the end, it was a winning weekend for P4AC.

Next tournament ? Hooter Hitout in September – go P4AC!

Sponsors and Donors

Photos from the weekend

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The grant to enable this opening was provided by the ACRF – every dollar they raise, they hand over in grants – now that’s encouraging!  P4AC won’t begin to try and explain the extraordinary work going on in this research facility – if you would like to learn more, click on this link – it’s an interesting read.

President Leigh, and committee member Graham, attended the opening and to put it simply, it was incredible!  Speakers included the Director of Diamantina Institute, Professor Matthew Brown, Professor Ian Frazer, and ACRF Chairman and Mr Tom Dery, Chairman of the Board of Trustees for ACRF.

After the official opening, we mingled and met some amazingly brilliant people, including Brooke Gardiner (Senior Research Officer) and David Brettell – Chief Executive and Company Secretary of ACRF.    Once well fed, we were taken on a tour of the research facilities where Professor Brown and Brooke explained their research and showed us the equipment that the ACRF grants have enabled to be purchased – they cost millions of dollars and are doing a brilliant job in trying to unravel the secrets of cancer!  ACRF are doing a wonderful job in supplying this infrastructure to these research facilities and it was a pleasure to be able to attend on this day and see the amazing work that ACRF and the Scientists do every day!

To hear the passion from these people was inspiring and confirmed that the work we are doing is making a difference!  So to all of our supporters, thank you!  Without your support we couldn’t do what we do – we are eternally grateful.

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This year we are again competing at the Softball Queensland Masters, where we will be defending our Division 1 title we won last year. However this year, we will be down one player, with the passing of our beautiful friend Jo McCullagh (nee Hopkins-Lamb) in May this year.

Joey will never be forgotten and all our fundraising efforts this year are in honour of her.  Monies raised through our events and merchandise sales will go to Bowel Cancer Research.  We are also conducting a raffle to raise money for Joey’s children, Cody (10) and Abby (8).   These funds will go into the trust account we have opened for the children.

We are hosting a Bledisloe Cup viewing on Saturday night – come along, there are great lucky door prizes and no doubt the game will be a ripper (like all Aussie v Kiwi games are).  We are all going to be at the park, so what better way to wind down at the end of another day’s hard play than to watch the game, enjoy a drink or two, a bite to eat, and raise money for this worthy cause.

If you can’t attend but would still like to donate, in honour of Jo, you can do so by clicking on this link.  Thank you in advance.

A big thank you to Wynnum Herald (Quest Newspapers) who have rallied and shown their support but posting this article on the front page of their Wednesday editions – check it out by clicking on this link.

We look forward to seeing you all on teh 5-7 August at Meakin Park.

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Some of the players were met prior to the presentation and several mentioned how much they enjoyed the day and how it should be done again (one even mentioned every year!!).  We couldn’t agree more:-)

BSA President Gordon Cunningham spoke to the assembled players and coaching staff and upon completion, presented a framed team photo to Club legend Alf Langer.   P4AC President Leigh then joined in for a group photo!

So keep coming back to visit our site, hopefully we can confirm that there will be another Yellow Socks Softball Challenge later this year!

In the meantime enjoy a couple of snaps from the presentation.

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