Each year, the Anatomy Club hosts a kickball tournament for students and teachers to raise money for different fundraisers. This year, they partnered with Connexion Latina to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), an organization that funds type 1 diabetes research. Each player paid an entrance fee of one dollar and if their team came out on top they were awarded a 100 dollar cash prize.
The Anatomy Club’s sponsor, Leila Warren shared her thoughts on this year’s kickball tournament.
“We’re the Anatomy Club and we have been doing this for like four or five years. The students and officers thought it would be fun to do. November is also diabetes awareness [month] so all the money that we fundraise goes to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation,” said Warren.
Although there was not a big turnout this year, Warren believes the tournament was still a fun thing to do to give back.
“We had a lot less participation than we normally do which was a little shocking. I don’t know what was different this year, maybe we didn’t get promoted enough. We didn’t make as much money as we normally do, but it was still fun. We’ve raised like $300 before but we had a few teams that weren’t filled. That was almost $100 that we didn’t raise because of those teams not being filled. We only raised like $50 because we do a cash payout for the winners. So we had to give them money for that. So we didn’t raise as much as we would have liked to,” said Warren.
David Welsh (‘23), a senior on the winning team, shares his favorite parts of the kickball tournament.
“I mean, there was really no doubt in my mind that we were going to win. When you go into the game with the mindset that you’re gonna win it’s not really surprising, but I was satisfied with our performance. It was a little cold but I mean [winning] was the best part,” said Welsh.
Going into the tournament, Welsh was prepared to put everything he had into each game.
“My goal was to just put it all out on the field, make sure I had nothing holding me back. I just wanted to show up for my team, that type of thing. I didn’t really do too much except hit the ball a couple of times and get on base,” said Welsh.
Welsh plans to participate in future fundraising events because he’s confident he will come out on top.
“I will participate in future events if there’s money involved because I know we’re gonna win every time and if it’s an individual event, I’m winning that too,” said Welsh.
Reagan Kuehne (‘23), a player on the senior girls’ team, explains why she signed up for the kickball tournament and how her team played.
“I decided to participate in it because I thought it was for a good cause. My team did all right, we didn’t win any of our games, but we had the team spirit and we had a great time and that’s all that matters,” said Kuehne.
Despite not winning the second game, Kuehne states that it was her favorite part of the tournament.
“My favorite part was our second game we played. It ended up being like, who could score first and it went on for a really long time. Sadly we did not score first but it was really fun,” said Kuehne.
Senior Jayden Jones (‘23) describes his experiences during the kickball game despite not being on the winning team.
“I signed up for the kickball tournament purely because I thought it was gonna be something fun [to do]. I also obviously thought it was a nice thing to know that the money from the kickball games was going to a good place, but I just really wanted an excuse to go have some fun. Going into the game I kind of knew it wasn’t gonna win […] but, regardless, it was really fun,” said Jones.
Although not the very best team, Jones says his team put up a good fight from the start of the game until the end.
“My favorite part of the kickball game was probably the first few seconds of our game. We were on defense and Colton Jiminez’s team and everybody was on offense. I was a pitcher and we got them out pretty quickly. We did really well on defense and it was great because they severely underestimated us. […] only for them to get on offense and then score like six points immediately,” said Jones.
Despite not raising as much as the Anatomy Club would like, it sounds like the 2022 kickball tournament was a success.