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Alabama Sportsmen for Kids
by Robert Callaway
This is a non profit trail to raise money for different charities for kids throughout the state of Alabama and they now have organized a tournament for cast for kids one of the charity organizations that we at sharingbassfishing-info.com is involved in PL Summerville I have tried to put together a brief outline of what we are doing as well as specific dates and tournament info. If I have left anything out please let me know. We are in the process of establishing non-profit status under the name "Alabama Sportsmen For Kids" or "A.S.K.". Our goal is to present 4-6 tournaments per year to benefit various charities with a concentration on both children and charities that are local to our state or region. On April 3rd we hosted our first event, a benefit tournament for St. Jude's Cancer Research, and even though it was Easter weekend and our first attempt at organizing a tournament we raised over $1100 for St. Jude's. We were pretty excited with the results but we also discovered a few areas we need to work on to make things run more smoothly as well as to get the word out about future events. Our next event will be Saturday June 5th launching out of Beeswax Park on Lay Lake and will be to benefit the Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama Child Caring Foundation. This is a great organization that provides health insurance to underprivileged kids in our state and Blue Cross has agreed to match everything we raise dollar for dollar. Entry is $100 per boat plus optional $10 "big bass". $50 from each entry goes to the prize pool for the day and the other $50 goes to the charity of the day. The $50 donation amount is tax deductible. We will be paying 1 out of every 5 boats after the first 20 entries and there is a guaranteed $1000 first place prize with 20 boats. Blast off will be at safe daylight and weigh-in will be at 2:00. We will be doing a tournament on the Warrior River in August to benefit C.A.S.T. For Kids of Alabama and another on Logan Martin in October to benefit Toys-For-Tots. Entry fee is the same for each event and we have some great door prizes to give away as well. So far our sponsors include JJ's Magic Fish Attractant, Alabama Power Co., Holt Audio and Bass Pro Shops. All of these have donated either equipment for our use or door prizes and thanks to them we have been able to put this series together without using entry money to support it. We hope to grow slowly but steadily over the next 2-3 years as well as adding a few more charities and donors to our list. AON Magazine has recently done an article on our tournament series and I was happy to find out that while several benefit tournaments are held each year, we are the only organization in this area who have devoted an entire tournament trail to charitable causes. For more information and updates you can log onto www.alabamafishingbuddy.ning.com or contact one of the following representatives: Robert Callaway (Tournament Director) 205-478-2977 Karen Elkins (Public Relations Officer) 256-755-0209 Sonny Garner (Promotions and Fund raising) 205-213-8278 Any of these representatives can provide you with entry information or assist you in donating to one or more of our charities. Thanks, Robert |
