The East Invite Is This Weekend!
This will be a great weekend! The East Invite is only statewide high school tournament before the state championship in mid-May. It's the first, real chance for Colorado's teams to see each other and, for the East players that missed the Rocky Mountain Invitational, their first tournament of the year.
It really is fun to see the team play and to cheer them on.
The schedule for the weekend is here: http://eastultimate.org/Invite/schedule.htm
And general information is here: http://eastultimate.org/Invite/invite.htm
If you can, try to catch at least one of East's games and the showcase game at 3:30 on Saturday. It's a rare chance to see how the game is played by some of the best - the University of Colorado and Johnny Bravo. Colorado won the open college championship in 2004 and last year lost in the finals to Brown by a score of 15-14. Johnny Bravo is one of the best club teams in the nation.
Susan Reher, Goofy's mom, is organizing the Invite and needs volunteers. Please contact her. It's not a tremendous commitment, and you'll want to be there.
Madison Trip
It's time to give everyone more information about our trip to Madison. The initial plan was to get full information out to everyone today, along with the cost, and the expected forms. Unfortunately, that plan has hit a snag – which I will explain in the note on Fundraising.
First the basic information: we leave early in the morning on Friday, April 21 on a large, professionally-driven, Grayline coach; switch drivers in Omaha; eat on the bus, and arrive in Madison around 8PM. We spend that night at the Middleton Hampton Inn (about a third of a mile from where we stayed last year.)
On Saturday morning, after breakfast at the hotel, we take the bus a few miles to Memorial High School for the tournament. We play all day and go to the tournament-provided dinnner or return to the hotel for pizza. In the morning, we will again have breakfast at the hotel and return to the Memorial to play. We leave after our last game - probably in the early afternoon. We stop for dinner before we leave Madison, then head home to East. We arrive at East very early in the morning on Monday - probably at around 5AM.
The planned trip is nearly the same (only the hotel and players are different) from the trip we did last year. That trip went smoothly and was a great experience for the kids. There's more information about last year's trip here: http://eastultimate.org/News/2005/news.htm
To make the trip as affordable as possible to as many families as possible, we subsidize this trip and provide some scholarships. We do this with donations that come primarily from parents, a grant from the PTA, and money from the butterbraid sale.
We expect the trip to cost between $200 and $300 per player. The precise cost will depend on the number of non-scholarship players going on the trip and the total donations we receive. We will have final information and forms out to parents early next week. At that time we will ask you to write a check for the cost of the trip.
Fundraising
We have received a number of checks – thanks for your generosity!
The team really could not operate without donations from parents and, again this year, many parents have contributed. You can see how important donations are by glancing at our budget. There's a link on the parents page of the website: http://www.eastultimate.org/About/parents.htm
There has been some confusion about our fundraising. Some people have sent checks intended as donations, understanding that they will need to write another check for the Madison trip. Others have sent checks believing that those checks would cover the cost of the Madison trip and uniforms.
I am very sorry about this confusion, and we certainly do not wish to accept money based on a misunderstanding. (Please try to keep in mind that asking people for money is a heinous job, and we are lucky to have volunteers to do it.)
Just to be sure that there are no misunderstandings, we are not depositing any checks unless we are certain they represent donations. For all but a few people, this means we will call you again before depositing your check.
-- Mark Hughes & Derek Gottlieb