This Saturday, July 5th at the Carman Golf and Country Club, the 28th annual Pritchard Memorial Golf Tournament will take place. The event is to honour the life of Mike Pritchard, who died of cancer on June 3rd, 1998. His younger brother Darren is one of the committee members, and joined the Morning Show to talk about the fundraising event's impact and legacy, as well as some very exciting news how this year's event will exclusively generate money for South Central Cancer Resource (SCCR).
Darren and his younger brother took over organizing the tournament around ten years ago, Over the last 12 years, since moving it to Carman, the event has raised over $626,000 for cancer-related charities in Manitoba.
"The Pritchard family, and the committee, decided we'd like to give all the money this year, 100%, to South Central Cancer Resource," shared Pritchard. "With so many more people with cancer down in that area, they need the money for all the different initiatives they have. We thought it would be beneficial for our tournament to hand all the proceeds over to South Central. Last year, we raised $103,000 for cancer, and we're hoping we can get to that number again."
Over 320 golfers are currently registered, so Pritchard noted, "It's going to be a massive tournament, again."
Quick decision to support SCCR solely
The conversation regarding donating all of the money generated to SCCR was a pretty easy one, according to Pritchard, who noted he and his mom attended a meeting with SCCR in Morden to share the news.
"We had a few of them in tears in their room, because last year we gave them $50,000, and this year we hope to hand over $100,000," he said. "We're going to get a lot of help from the committee members from South Central at the golf tournament. They're going to be at the front desk, they're going to be on holes, they're going to be all over the golf course, helping us with social media and everything. We love the fact there's going to be about ten of them at the tournament, because it's a large tournament, and having them there to help is fantastic and deliver the message where the money is going."
Multiple online ways to donate
Even if you aren't able to golf, you can still support the Pritchard Memorial tournament, and ultimately SCCR. There are multiple ways to do so online:
- Buy Raffle tickets online which includes a grand prize of a pair of tickets to a Jets game anywhere in North America, flight, hotel, jersey’s and spending money included.
- Online auction which closes at 10pm July 5th
- Buy 50/50 tickets online
"A lot of work goes into this," stressed Pritchard. "This is a huge committee that puts this tournament on. It's all staying local. All this money is coming back to South Central Cancer Resource... So hopefully you can help us out to raise more than we have ever made before."