Strawberry Crest football held their third annual Clay Shoot Fundraiser last week, aimed at raising money to provide video and football equipment for the program.
After COVID delayed the start of the fundraiser, an idea head coach Phillip Prior had come up with upon taking over the Chargers’ program ahead of the 2019 season, Strawberry Crest held the first event in 2021. Since then, participation has grown exponentially as this year’s fundraiser boasted 31 sponsors and over 100 participants.
“We’ve more than doubled in size since our first fundraiser and it’s just so encouraging to see,” Prior said. “It’s just been so encouraging to see. We’ve got 31 sponsors out here this year and we’re really seeing the community and people rally around our football program. We’ve got alumni, we’ve got players out here participating, friends of families and then just people who saw an advertisement and said that they wanted to go shoot in a charity event. There’s a diverse group of people that want to help our program out here today and it’s just very encouraging.”
But for Prior and the Chargers, the fundraiser is about more than just the money raised, it’s about rallying the local community and alumni around a football team that has lacked support in past years. With the feeling that a clay shoot would better suit the Strawberry Crest community than a golf tournament or run-of-the-mill fundraiser, the Chargers have felt the impact that their changing culture — and winning over the past couple of years — has had on the program as a whole.
“I think there’s a community that wants to support Strawberry Crest football, there’s people out there that want to support us,” Prior said. “And part of that is having a little bit of success but we were also out here a couple of months ago donating our time and helping with an event for one of our sponsors. We want to give back too. Right here we’ve got a lot of people coming out and supporting us but we also want to give back. But again, it all goes back to our sponsorships. We have fence lines of people that want to sponsor us and have their name and banner around our football field all year on top of all these donations. A lot of people do golf tournaments but we wanted to do something different and I felt like a clay shoot encapsulates our guys a little more, so it’s right up our alley. Our players are out here, they get to come out and be trappers and they’re having a good time. With a clay shoot you can come out here, it’s a 50-clay event, and you could not hit a single clay or hit one clay and still have a good time. It’s a lot of fun to come out here and then people also have a chance to win a bunch of the great prizes we have.”
From video platforms to football equipment, Prior got to Crest and immediately saw a need for equipment that was necessary to help the team get better at football — with needs ranging from sleds to dummies to camera systems — that the fundraiser along with donations and sponsors help provide.
“Jerseys and stuff are nice, but our player safety and things that help us get better at football are our primary focus when it comes to spending funds and that’s what we try to target,” Prior said.
Along with the clay shoot, the fundraiser provided food for the attendees along with a number of raffles and auctions to raise money through gifts donated by local businesses. And if you weren’t able to make the fundraiser but would still like to support the Chargers, Strawberry Crest are still accepting sponsorships through August 12. If you would like to sponsor Strawberry Crest football or make a donation, contact head coach Phillip Prior by email at Phillip.Prior@hcps.net