This Saturday, April 4, the Hillsdale softball team will be fundraising for the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Brad Monastiere, assistant athletic director for media relations and event management, said the origin for the event began with the softball team’s new powder-blue uniforms.
After learning that powder blue was the representative color for prostate cancer, Monastiere said he put together that the softball team could stage an event to help raise awareness for prostate cancer in the same fashion college volleyball and basketball teams have done for cancer in the past.
“I also really liked the idea of a women’s team participating in something to help fight a disease that affects men, much in the same way you see men’s teams be part of a program that deals with a disease that affects women,” Monastiere said.
Joe Abraham, head softball coach, said the jerseys were free.
“Everyone does pink, we wanted to do something different,” Abraham said. “And light blue matches Hillsdale’s colors better.”
Monastiere said there are several avenues through which they will raise the money. He said recent graduate Allison Hettrick, his intern, secured bracelets from the Prostate Cancer Foundation that will be sold for $2 each. There will also be a raffle for college apparel, according to Abraham. In addition, a bake sale with goods baked by the players will raise funds.
“If we can put together a donation of substance to pcf.org, then I will consider it to be a success,” Monastiere said.
He added that the softball players and coaches have been extremely enthusiastic with their support of this event.
“While a secondary focus of this event is to help bring students out to our games to support our team, I don’t want to lose sight of the primary focus, which is to bring attention to an affliction that hits one out of every six men,” Monastiere said. “And I want to point out specifically that this is a program that has affected friends and family members of our Charger softball team, and this team’s interest in this is worthy of praise. It’s always a challenge doing something like this for the very first time, but Allison has done tremendous work, in conjunction with the softball team, to help lay the foundation for what I hope becomes an annual event.”
