IVC women’s volleyball helps to raise money for breast cancer research
The women’s IVC volleyball team played Golden West College on Friday to help raise money for the Side-Out Dig Pink Volleyball Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign for breast cancer research.
A mix of IVC and Golden West College fans came to watch their school compete. At the door each participant bought a five dollar raffle ticket, where they immediately received a pink Aasis shirt and a bottle of pink Simple Green.
“It all started 2 years ago with an ex player of ours, Caitlin Segert, it was her idea to begin this community service and we have continued to carry it on since she left.” said head coach of the IVC women’s volleyball team, Tom Pestolesi.
But this year, a student from Cal State Fullerton did a ton of work making the Dig Pink Volleyball Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign a success.
“A lot of the credit goes to Bruce Bourquin for making this such a cool event.” said Pestolesi.
Bourquin helped make this event for a school graduate project.
“I got in touch with IVC and started to work on the project. I had to get donations from all over the place, it took a long time.” said Bourquin.
Bourquin succeeded in finding businesses to donate for the breast cancer campaign raffle. He got Knotts Berry Farm, Universal Studios, Active Ride Shop, Starbucks, Costco, Target, Outback Steakhouse, Simple Green and many more to donate.
“Most of the people who donated were very helpful and professional. A lot of the companies were already contributing to a breast cancer fundraiser, so I got rejected from them.” said Bourquin.
Bourquin even succeeded in publicizing the event, he got in touch with KIIS-FM and scored the coach, Pestolesi an interview regarding the campaign.
“It is our goal to raise 1,000 dollars this evening. All levels of schooling from Jr. High up to college can participate in this Side-Out Breast Cancer Awareness campaign, and many schools are. Side-Out’s goal is to raise 2.5 million dollars for breast cancer research. They literally have thousands of schools participating.” said Pestolesi
The thousand dollar goal was reached on Friday evening to donate to cancer research and many of the spectators went home winners.
“We feel really good about this [campaign], its good for the students, good for the [sports] program and it puts everyone in good spirits” said Pestolesi.
As for the volleyball game, IVC lost but with an amazing fight. They played five sets, in which IVC won two, and lost on the fifth set.
Players from both teams represented the color pink for breast cancer in their game.
IVC wore pink streaks in their hair and some players wore a pink jersey. Golden West had pink shoelaces, and some of their team also wore pink jerseys.
I am really excited to see the campaign turn out, there are a lot of people here” said Bourquin.
For more information on the Side-Out Dig Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign, visit Side-Out.org to find out how you can donate to breast cancer research.