Our 31st annual Family Ball Tournament will be held on
Friday, August 9th and Saturday, August 10th, 2024
This year’s charities: Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre
AND
Dare To Be Vulnerable
This year our proceeds will go to two benefactors. We announced last year that this year’s tournament would be raising funds for mental health, and we have two very deserving charities to work for this year.
The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre is one of Canada’s foremost mental health care, teaching and research hospitals. Their mandate is simple: to help more people with mental illness and addiction into recovery faster. The Royal serves people age 16 and older living with complex and persistent mental illness. They provide a broad array of inpatient, outpatient, and community-based services.
The Dare To Be Vulnerable Project is a social impact not-for-profit-driven enterprise focused on breaking the silence, busting the stigma, removing the shame, and changing lives by sharing our mental health stories. They provide a safe place to share stories through their events. By rising up and speaking out, those who are struggling in silence get permission to reach out and have a conversation with someone they trust. Everyone has a mental health story that has the power to change a life.
As usual, we will also give other smaller donations to local charities as suggested by you, our families. Please send us suggestions for our smaller charitable donations.
Other important details for 2024:
Our 2024 Family Teams:
Blanchfield, Bracken, Chambers, Churchill, B. Dewan, W. Dewan, Douglas, Downey, Helem/Doyle, Holmes, Kelly, McEvoy, Mussell, Quinn, Rowan, Thompson
FOOD
Sandwiches will be available Friday night and Saturday.
Coffee, donuts and fruit will be available Saturday morning.
Pizza slices will be available for sale Friday night (9 pm)
The barbecue will have hamburgers and hot dogs from 11 till 6:30 pm on Saturday.
Fries for Charity will set up all day Saturday. Proceeds from that will go to the Care Centre. Tony will be cooking (TBA) Saturday evening (8 pm, right before the final game).
BAR
The bar is open from 4 till 11 on Friday night, and from 11 am till midnight on Saturday night.
MVP PRIZES
The MVP prizes will be donated by each family again this year. Please provide an all-ages gift card for $25 as the MVP prize and please get it to Ben and Natasha Chambers by Saturday at noon.
HOME RUN DERBY
The Home Run Derby takes place on Diamond Two at the afternoon break in the schedule, and you can sign up anytime before it begins. Executive Director Christine Tierney needs help to retrieve balls.
KIDS GAME
Executive Director Brad Quinn always needs more volunteers to help him with the game JUST for the little ones. It will be played on Diamond One at the same time as the Home Run Derby. Make sure your young ones know about it, and bring their gloves and running shoes!
TUNES AND ENTERTAINMENT
Live entertainment all weekend again this year!
Thompson Live is playing live music from 8 to 11 pm on Friday night.
Dylan Watts will play from 11 am to 1 pm Saturday.
The Two Paddys will play from 3 to 6 pm Saturday.
Brandy n Port is playing from 8 till midnight Saturday night!
KIDS CORNER
Kids Corner is always a hit. Reminder that if you have any older kids who might want to help out please be sure to show them where everything is! Colouring, face painting, games, and of course CANDY!
RAFFLES
We changed the silent auction to a bucket raffle last year and it went … well. We are making a few changes to ticket selling so they are more available to everyone all weekend this year. A bucket raffle works very easily: you buy a string of double raffle tickets. You separate them and you write your name and phone number on them, and put them in the buckets of the prizes you want to win. If we draw your name, you win the item.
We had almost 60 prizes again last year! Thank you to all who helped us fill our table. We are actively soliciting prizes again for the bucket raffle, so if you know anyone who can donate something please collect it and let us know so we can add it to the master list of prizes. It is very hard to organize last minute additions to the raffle, so please get the item to us before the tournament if possible.
We will also be doing our normal 50/50 draw this year. However, this year we will also be putting names and phone numbers on the 50/50 tickets, so when we draw the winning name, if it’s yours, it’s yours!
FACEBOOK PAGE
Watch for planning and tournament updates on our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/FamilyBallTournament