Back in July when Brisbane Panthers Softball Club decided on doing a another Pink Panther Day they, along with us, probably had no idea how successful one fun day could be. 23rd of November – PINK PANTHER DAY proved to be a massive hit – so much so that people are already talking about what can be done to make next year even better!

Like any event fundraiser there are always so many to thanks so let’s get straight into it:

• Panthers committee (for choosing our charity to fundraise for)
• Brisbane Softball (special call out to Michelle and Dave Waller)
• Pink Panther committee (special shout out to Kerry and Wayne)
• Panthers club members for supporting the day (special shout out to Alyssa & Shianne)
• Members of other BSA clubs who participated in the day (and looked so fine!)
• Miki and Stealers softball for your hefty donations
• #teamp4ac supporters for again getting behind our event
• Jane and InCamera for the amazing pics from the day – check them out here
• Rhegan for buying and making the fantastic B1 shirts for the day. We are thinking that perhaps next year a bigger order may be on the cards!

And of course the following who donated goods to make up our amazing raffle prizes:

• Kylie and KJH Artworks for the beautiful ‘Strong Spirits’ print and softball;
• Bunnings Warehouse Wynnum;
• Stacey Porter;
• Blue Bean Coffee; and
• Sandy Lewis

On the day we held a BBQ along with selling a host of pink goodies. Thank you to our bakers for not only cooking the deliciousness but also for donating the food (special shout to to Tracy (and Charlotte), Kyla and Kerry (again)).

Thanks to you Lyssy for the pretty hair bands. They proved to be a real hit!

Thank you Fred and a special shout out to GE Mallan Bulk Meats for the snags and cut up onions. Who doesn’t love a snag and onion on bread! A huge shout out to Dan for being our Masterchef, especially when you were in the middle of your ‘challenge’. We’re not quite sure how you did it but of course we are incredibly grateful!

Woolworths Wynnum, Springfield and Greenbank for donating gift cards allowing us to cover the costs of any foods we purchased for the day.

It was a very long day but so worth it because the final amount raised on Pink Panther Day 3.0 was…..……… Over $4000 raised for cancer research. An absolutely amazing result and we cannot wait until PPD 4.0!

Over 215 guests gathered for our 4th annual cancer research charity dinner at Victoria Park Golf Complex dressed in GOLD to raise funds for Childhood Cancers.

Our supporters dug deep and helped us raise in excess of $28,000 for Professor Bryan Day and his cancer research. We arrived at this outstanding amount through sponsorship, our raffle, silent and live auctions, as well as some donations. Of course we couldn’t have had such a successful evening with the following. To them we will continue to be eternally grateful.

SPONSORS

• Allmet Engineering
• Heit and Son
• Rosie’s Early Learning Centre
• Carrie Rose Consulting

DONORS

Victoria Carthew did an amazing job emceeing the event, Brian Kerle and Joyce Lester kept us entertained with their stories and Vintage and Taylor Wilton again rocked the house. We were fortunate to hear from Dr David Pattison who gave us an update on his world breaking prostate cancer research and how the money we raised and donated to his research has assisted him.

We then we got to hear from Professor Bryan Day and what he and his team are doing for paediatric brain cancer and why it is so vital for community support. We are thrilled to be able to be part of this very important community.

Helping Hand Group were great in providing staff and items for our auctions as well as donating a holiday. Simply outstanding! They certainly took the pressure of the board, and we are incredibly grateful for your support, especially Kimberley and Amelie. And of course to Bendigo Bank Wynnum who provided 2 eftpos machines – taking payments made that much easier! Shout out too to Kylie from Victoria Park Golf Complex – your support on the night was 2nd to none and to Amy and Lauren for all the ‘behind the scenes’ work.

Kingsley from Champions Sport Memorabilia was again on hand to provide us with some beautiful auction pieces as well as helping to set up our auction items. Thank you!

Danny and Madison Sport brought in 2 gold basketballs on the night and we were thrilled to be able to offer them on the night as a last minute item! Brian kindly offered a one on one session too! They were both snapped up, as you could imagine!

This year we were able to offer folks the chance to wear our logo as a pin. Thank you to Bill and Fresh Promotions Australia for providing these pins at a heavily discounted price, on top of donating a substantial amount! We love them and believe they are a quaint and unique way to promote our charity.

Jane once again donated a print and took photos of the evening. To see the photos from our evening, click here. Thanks Jane, once again the photos are fantastic!

Our night was a huge success, and we are extremely happy with the outcome. Thank you to everybody who made it the night it was. We say it all the time, because it’s true, but we couldn’t do it without each and everyone of you!

We will share further news when we make our donation to Professor Day but in the meantime, please save the date – 24th October, 2020 – our 10th birthday!

OK, we didn’t win the Grand Final, but for a bunch of ladies, well we won’t divulge our age, as mature as we are (here’s a hint, this was our 10th year playing masters and we started around 3-4 years after we could start playing masters), we were pleased to finish top of the table after the round robins and make the Grand Final where we ultimately went down to Renegades. We put up a good battle but they were too good on the day. Congratulations to Ivan and the team!

So you may be wondering about the title then? It’s because, we did win! Team P4AC raised exactly $4000 over 3 days! And exactly that amount, $4000 will go to cancer research, so you see we did win 🙂

There are so many people to thank for helping us get to that amount (considering this was our first time not doing a raffle, this amount is amazing!!). First and foremost we have to thank Deb Prouten. For 10 years Deb and her team, the Toowoomba Warriors, have, instead of buying team gifts, donated to our charity. Deb has not just settled there either. For the last couple of years Deb has reached out to other participants asking they too get into the spirit and donate rather than purchase gifts. So this year, we are so pleased to be able to thank the following Ladies teams for their wonderful donations!

PMS

Mulgowie Angels

Champagne Ladies

Caboolture Warriors

Aunty Emma’s Moongalba

Dodgers

TAN Aunties

Diamond Divas

Brisbane Fusion

Hervey Bay Terrors

Playerz

Dolphin Wannabes and

Pinkie (cash and wine (for our dinner))

And then we had our very own Carrie Rose and her beautiful ChildCare Centre, Rosie’s Early Learning Centre donate. Carrie does this quietly every year and it bumps up the final figure quite nicely. We love having Carrie in our team, yes even more than her donations, but we will also be so grateful for them!

This year, Seeta and her business Anchor Blue Coffee asked if they could help in any way and ultimately decided to donate a percentage of all sales over the weekend. Well they must have had a boomer weekend (and we can understand why because the coffee (and service) was A+)) because Seeta donated over $800 to us. To say we were blown away is an understatement!

And then finally today we got the final amounts confirmed. Redcliffe Leagues Softball Association also reached out to us and offered the BBQ to us on the Saturday night (middle of the tournament). We of course, graciously accepted, and expected to make a few hundred dollars. Carrie, Redcliffe President, called on her friends, Petero and Bonnie Civoniceva, to help out and they were magnificent in running the BBQ along side the majority of our team. Then, Carrie and her team at RLSA decided to donate all of the proceeds and covered the costs of all the food meaning we ended up collecting a cool $700+ for our BBQ!

So as you can see, we had quite a few avenues for fundraising – all because of the generosity of our softball community. Thanks too to SQ for allowing us again to fundraise! And as per usual thank you to Rose from KR Sports Photos for all of the photos, including our team photo and to Jane for her photos too!

T o the team – thank you for playing again this year – our 10th year! Can you believe it!? We even went a bit retro with our uniform and we think it was our best one yet! The team looked amazing! Thanks to our coaches Jason and Sheridan 🙂

And to wrap it all up, we had the absolute pleasure to award our first ever Team P4AC Masters Life Memberships to Kelly and Jason, affectionately known as Smacka and Frecks. Husband and wife team, Smacka and Frecks have been involved in all 10 campaigns – truly amazing and we are so proud to have them be the first recipients and of course on our team.

We are back and we will be returning to the beautiful Marquee Room at Victoria Park Golf Complex for our 2019 Annual Charity Cancer Research dinner, with emcee Victoria Carthew.

This year, all profits of the event will help Professor Bryan Day and his team at the Sid Faithfull Brain Cancer Laboratory, particularly Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG).  Just by coming you will be rewarded with a fun-filled night of:

• Guest Speakers 
• Live Music by songstress Taylor Wilton and the band Vintage
• A 2-course 5-star meal
• 4 hour beverage package including wine, beer and soft drink
• Cheese Station
• Raffles
• Lucky Door Prize
• Live and Silent Auctions
• Dancing and plenty of laughs

Want some fresh air? Step outside….

On the 19th October, 2019 from 6:30pm, arrive for pre-dinner drinks in a private outdoor area and then, just before 7pm, head into the magnificent Marquee room for dinner where you can meet our guests.

This year we ask you wear GOLD – the colour of Childhood Cancers. Because we all know cancer is cruel for whomever is diagnosed but when a child gets cancer, its unfathomable!

Be sure to bring some spare change with you, as all throughout the night we will be holding raffle draws with some fantastic prizes to be won.

As always, we will be holding an auction as well as a silent auction.  Credit card facilities will be available for convenience so that any auction items won on the night can either be paid for by cash or credit card – allowing you to take your winning goodies home with you!

Check out all the latest updates on our Facebook event page as we provide further information about the night, including our guest stars and prizes to be won!

About Victoria, our Emcee

Victoria is a highly respected journalist, presenter, broadcaster, producer and emcee, and has more than two decades of media experience. Currently a presenter with the Seven Network’s popular travel and lifestyle program, ‘Queensland Weekender’, Victoria is also a regular guest on both Radio 4BC and ABC 612 and is the Brisbane Broncos No.1 Emcee.

Due to our donation,  from funds raised at the Yellow Socks Softball Challenge, to the Australian Cancer Research Foundation, we were invited to attend the opening of the ACRF comprehensive Cancer Genomics Facility at the Diamantina Institute in the PA Hospital on Tuesday 19th July, 2011.

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.