Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Irving Rocks!!!

Hey everyone. Sorry for the delay. I have been waiting for the results from our event at Irvings so that I can share them with everyone. Well, we had a record breaking year and raised $143,000!!!!! I am beyond excited with this news. As many of you know, in addition to the actual gas pumping event, Irving employees sold clings for the entire month prior to Serve and Protect. I was shocked to hear that there were stores in Maine that sold over 4,000 clings. As a matter of fact, the Biddeford store sold over 7000!!!!!! That is amazing. Irving employees really went above and beyond the call of duty with their efforts. Many of them came up with some clever gimicks in their stores and many extra fund raising efforts. The other two incredible parts to this story are the Maine Law Enforcement members and the SOME athletes and coaches who went to each location to help with the fundraising. Many even used vacation time to participate. A huge thank you to everyone who helped make this event such a huge success and a special thank you to Officer Chris Gardner and Irving Rep Kyle Burrell who worked so hard to pull everything together. What an exciting year! I am already hearing from people on ideas that they have for next year.

On another note, just because it's summer don't think that there is nothing going on in the world of Special Olympics. Our sailing program in Portland is well underway, golf is taking place, and next week will be the annual ALL STAR SOCCER TOURNAMENT to benefit SOME. Maine's top high school soccer graduates will be playing on Tuesday July 31st at Westbrook High School. Women's games are at 6 and Men's at 8. Feel free to join us in Westbrook to watch an awesome night of soccer competition. You can call Mark Capano at 879-0489 for more info.

Hey, speaking of Mark...last week he, along with our Maine Team USA athletes and coaches, traveled to Tennessee for a training camp for the upcoming world games in China. They had an awesome trip and feel more ready than ever to compete at this World Class event. Rockland Police Officer Troy Peasely and SOME athlete Chris Oster have both been selected to run in the LETR Final Leg for the two weeks preceding the games. What an exciting time it is for all of us.

Don't forget that we still have Harley raffle tickets and very cool torch run t-shirts that have been compressed in to the shape of a torch, for sale. Tickets are $20 each and t-shirts are $10. Give me a call at 839-5578 to purchase yours.

I guess that is all for today. I am heading out for vacation in a couple of days to go camping with the family. Should be fun. Hope for great weather.