One of the organizer’s of last weekend’s Breast Friends Slow Pitch Tourney and Fundraiser said she was once again impressed with the level of support in the Westlock area.
Shelley Chamzuk, who organized the July 1-2 tournament with several friends, said the more than $5,000 raised will go toward purchasing a positron emission tomography scanner — an important diagnostic tool.
“I am overwhelmed with the support we’ve got from the community,” she said.
The event has been running for nearly a decade. Her friend Maxine Careless was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, and had the idea to raise money for the PET scanner.
The event was initially a horse-riding fundraiser, but this year they changed the format to be a ball tourney.
While Careless passed away in 2008, the fundraising event continued in her honour, and this year, they have been able to fundraise in honour of another friend.
Catherine de Champlain was diagnosed with the deadly disease late last year, and said regardless of whether or not any money is raised she is happy to know she has supportive friends and a supportive community.
“I’m just so overwhelmed with the whole weekend,” she said.
“It’s amazing people and an amazing community that come together to help people. They’re special out here.”
She watched her father suffer from and eventually succumb to cancer, and knows how the disease affects not just the patients, but their family and friends as well.
Her experience with her father has made her even more grateful for the efforts of different fundraising groups, noting that those efforts have lead to some vast improvements in the way the disease is diagnosed and treated since the 1980s.
“It’s amazing what’s transpired in the past 10 or 20 years,” she said. “I feel blessed because if it wasn’t for people helping us out, we wouldn’t have these new treatments.”
De Champlain had nothing but praise for the people who came out to take part in the tournament and supper/silent auction over the weekend.
“They’re sacrificing a long weekend to volunteer and help somebody out, and that’s just special,” she said.
Chamzuk said aside from the tournament itself, she was very grateful to have the help of several of her friends in organizing the tournament: Jill Careless, Sheri McCallum, Tina Viney, Kay Thompson and Angie Hampshire.
“Everybody brought a different gift to being able to run something like this,” she said.
She added she was quite moved by four-year-old Krysta Doblanko, who said cut off her waist-length hair to raise money for the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton.
“She said she wanted to cut her hair so that no other little kid had to walk around with no hair,” Chamzuk said.
Chamzuk said the tournament could not have taken place without the teams that participated, noting they came from as far away as Barrhead.
She said she was especially proud of one of the teams, which was composed mostly of high-school aged players. “Many of them were at Safe Grad on Thursday night, but they were still here first thing in the morning,” she said.
In total, the tournament raised more than $5,000, and Chamzuk said she expects it will become an annual event.
