Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become synonymous with Thanksgiving and almost everyone is aware of what goes on in stores and online during these two days. What about Giving Tuesday? Not as many people have heard about this global day of giving and we are here to help spread the word! Giving Tuesday is celebrated on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and aims to kick off and promote charitable work during the holiday season. Created by the Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact in 2012, Giving Tuesday is now in its fourth year and continuing to grow! In addition to celebrating philanthropy, Giving Tuesday also strives to connect diverse groups of individuals, communities and organizations around the world for one common purpose.
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            This year, we are asking you to help us grow the movement by donating to the Eric D. Dettenreider Memorial Fund on Giving Tuesday! We love being able to provide clinics and events for our athletes but these events do cost money to run and, as a non-profit, we rely solely on donations to help us fund our events. The majority of our support comes from individuals like you. Thanks to all these generous donations, each of our athletes is able to participate in our various sports clinics free of charge. By having the opportunity to play soccer, basketball, swimming, and skiing with their buddies, our athletes and buddies are creating countless memories and close relationships that carry on over the years. The excitement and joy we see in our athletes during our clinics is a priceless experience that we hope to continue to provide for years to come. This holiday season, in the spirit of giving, please consider donating to the EDD Memorial Fund!

Our Auction Committee is hard at work cataloging the beautiful items for next weekend's silent auction. A generous group of artists, craftspeople and friends have donated unique pieces to the EDD All-Star Benefit silent auction. There's something for every interest, including original artwork, themed gift baskets, books, gift certificates to local hot-spots and a pair of telemark skis.  

Join us for the EDD Memorial Fund All-Star Benefit Dinner & Silent Auction!
Saturday, October 29
5:30pm  Silent Auction & Cash Bar
​6:30 pm Dinner & Program
Elk's Club, 84 Chestnut Street, Oneonta, NY

Featuring
Presentation of 2016 EDD All-Star Team *Balloon Art for the kids *Music by the Sweet Adelines Quartet "Euphoria"

​On Sunday August 20th, EDD athletes and Saint Michael’s Women’s and Men’s Soccer players all came together for an adaptive soccer clinic on George “Doc” Jacobs Field.  The goals of the clinic were for the EDD athletes to improve their soccer skills and to make connections with the college athletes who were paired up with them. The clinic was full with excitement. We divided the 22 participants into groups by age, and each athlete went to four different stations which included shooting, passing, dribbling and scrimmaging against some of the SMC players on the big field.  All the athletes enjoyed the full field scrimmage because it gave them an opportunity to show off their skills!
 
 The excitement from all the athletes was something we’ve never seen before. The St. Michael’s players enjoyed getting to know the EDD athletes.  The experience also gave our teams the chance to reflect on how truly lucky we are for what we do as athletes every day.  For some players, simply making contact with the soccer ball made their day, and we celebrated each accomplishment, large or small.  Following the soccer session, the athletes were given an SMC soccer shirt, a certificate, and medal for participation. The SMC athletes then made a tunnel for the EDD athletes to run through and cheer them on for what a wonderful job they did during the clinic.  We are excited to be holding another EDD adaptive clinic on Sunday October 23rd from 11 - 1pm at Saint Michaels College.

          One of our goals as interns for the EDD Memorial Fund and members of the Saint Michael’s College women’s soccer team is to connect the Saint Michael’s College community and the EDD athletes in as many ways as possible. We want our classmates and peers to see the impact they can make in the lives of the EDD athletes. In order to make this connection, we have been brainstorming different events we could hold on campus and various ways we could include the EDD athletes in our own athletic endeavors. After watching a professional soccer game on TV, we had an epiphany. Wouldn’t it be great to have the EDD athletes walk out with our starters, the same way professional soccer players walk out with young soccer players?

           We sent out a message to all local EDD athletes inviting them to join the Saint Michael’s College women’s soccer team on Duffy Field for a home game on September 17th, 2016. Five of our EDD athletes joined the starting players as they walked out to the center of the field and greeted the crowd before standing with the women’s team as the national anthem played. The EDD athletes were cheering “Go Saint Mike’s!” for the duration of the walkout and our players were ecstatic to be with our EDD buddies again. The EDD player’s excitement for us and their continuous, energetic chants helped calm our nerves and prepare us to play our match. Our EDD athletes then joined the women’s team in their pregame huddle to hear the pump up speech and cheer along with the team as the starters ran out onto the field to take on their opponent.  It was incredible to be able to share the exciting experience of walking out with our EDD athletes and allow them to truly be a part of our team. We had many peers come up to us after the game telling us how great they thought this event was and we were thrilled to hear that the crowd enjoyed it just as much as we did.

         This was the first time we have had athletes walk out with our soccer team and are hoping to get even more EDD athletes to come out to our next walk out with the men’s soccer team on October 1st! Ideally, we would like to get all the sports teams on campus involved so the EDD athletes have the opportunity to meet all the Saint Michael’s College athletes and be a part of different sporting events.