Loudonville High seniors get into the fundraising swing with golf scramble
LOUDONVILLE − The senior class at Loudonville High School will conduct a fundraiser Sunday (April 23) for the Loudonville-Perrysville School Foundation, a golf scramble at Pleasant Hill Golf Course.
Having the class support a fundraiser is not an unusual activity, but the fact that Loudonville High seniors have partnered with the school foundation for 24 years makes the event special.
According to Mike Bandy, who has served as foundation president since its inception in 2000, this year’s senior class likely will set a record for money raised.
“The record was achieved in 2007, when the seniors sponsored a cow pie bingo game in Riverside park and raised $4,650,” Bandy said. “This year’s seniors have already generated over $4,500 in preliminary activities, and conceivably will have raised $6,000 or more when they are done.”
The fundraiser is coordinated by the senior class officers. One of them, Katie Seboe, stressed, “I like to win. When we started planning this, I declared we would raise the most money ever in a senior project for the foundation.”
Why did Loudonville's senior class pick a golf tournament?
“We looked at past senior projects with the idea that we do something different,” fellow officer Goldie Layton said. “This year, we had a great golf team, winning the Mid-Buckeye Conference and qualifying for the district, so we decided to try a golf scramble.”
As part of their efforts on the scramble, the officers arranged for class volunteers to sell 50:50 raffle tickets at basketball games this winter.
“This went better than we ever expected,” officer David Knoble said. “We raised $2,500 on raffle tickets.”
Next effort was to sell hole sponsorships, offering them for $50 each.
“There are just 18 holes on the Pleasant Hill course, but we sold 49 sponsorships,” officer Kenzie Cutlip said, “meaning we will have two or three sponsors for each. After we print signs for the sponsors, we will have about $42 in profit for each sponsorship, giving us another $2,000 or more.”
At Sunday’s event, which begins at 10 a.m. with a shotgun start, the seniors will conduct several more revenue streams. By the way, in case of rain, the scramble will be moved to Sunday, April 30.
“The tournament involves four-player teams, with an entry fee of $60 per player, which covers green fees, special proximity prizes on eight different holes, and a hole-in-one contest on the 160-yard 14th hole,” officer Zach Frankford said.
The class will also sell refreshments during the round, delivering food and drink to holes via golf cart, and a silent auction of donated items. Among the big prizes donated for the scramble are a eight-day, seven-night vacation to Hawaii, and a $500 gift card for Omaha Steaks.
Golfers will be treated to lunch, hamburgers, hot dogs and trimmings, after the competition. Kelly Seboe, former Redbird basketball coach and now principal of the Budd Elementary school, will serve as grill master, backed by Lions Club culinary artist Doc Simmons.
Participants can enter an optional skins game for $20, with first place prizes going to the best score turned in by a man and the best one from a woman.
How to register for the golf scramble
Cutlip said that as of last week, 11 teams had entered the tournament, with more expected. Teams may register on the L-P School Foundation website or by calling Jeff Frankford, senior class adviser, at 419-606-8178.
Prior to this year, senior class projects had generated $56,305, an average of $2,448 each year, a significant part of the $900,000 in assets the foundation has accumulated since 2000, Bandy said.
Projects have ranged from a walkathon, dodgeball and basketball competitions, a miniature golf tournament, and talent show and a cutest pet contest.
The first project was called “Link to the Millennium,” and involved stringing participants from the west to the east side of Loudonville holding hands, a show of community unity at the start of the new millennium.
Bandy remembered part of the motivation to start the senior projects, in addition to raising funds, was to harness senior energies into a positive effort. In the 1990s a class prank tradition evolved, and some of those pranks turned out to be destructive, he said.
This fundraising tradition has changed into a positive one.
Senior projects have had various levels of success. In 2013, the miniature golf tournament was spoiled by a torrential rainstorm and only generated $427. And in 2020, the COVID year, the project was canceled due to the pandemic with $175 donated prior to the cancellation.
Projects generating more than $4,000 include seniors working around town (among the work they did was plant many of the new maple trees lining the state Route 3 bypass) in 2005; cow pie bingo in 2007; and Senior Night Live in 2019.
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Loudonville seniors keep fundraising tradition rolling with golf event
