"We were able to round up 200 kids in all. Most of the kids were from Texas Youth Commission (specifically the Gainesville State School, McFadden Ranch, and the Cottrell House). We also had kids from the Boys & Girls Club and a Christian Boys Home called Rick’s Kids. The kids from the Texas Youth Commission are mostly made up of kids that have gotten in trouble for drugs & alcohol or a violent offense of some kind and have been placed in a Texas Youth Commission location to help rehabilitate them. Gainesville State School was part of a big story in high school football with Grapevine Faith School last year (http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3789373). All of the sponsors said the game was all their kids had talked about the entire week. Another cool aside is that Gwan Hawthorne, David Hawthorne’s mother, works at the Gainesville State School and was my contact there. She told David about what was going on and said that he was excited about the ordeal. She attended as one of the sponsors with Gainesville State School.
We reserved Fellowship Hall in University Christian Church as a place for the organizations to park and meet up before the game. We bought breakfast for them and the kids all showed up, ate some breakfast, and played around with some footballs we had before heading over a little early to check out Frog Alley. All of them were really well mannered, called people “sir” and “ma’am”, and very grateful for the opportunity to attend the game. As far as the Texas Youth Commission goes, coming to an event like this is something they use to reward the kids who are on good behavior and meet a certain standard that they have set for the kids placed in their facilities, so to see how excited they were about attending an event like this was pretty special, especially when considering that there aren’t a lot of opportunities like this for them.
I’m sorry there are a lack of pictures, but a lot of the kids aren’t allowed to be in pictures for privacy/safety reasons. However, here are a few that I think are safe. Gwan Hawthorne is the one in the David Hawthorne jersey. Since it was difficult to get pictures, I also included a couple of pictures of my little Brother (through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program) that I took to the game.
Thanks again for everything. I sincerely appreciate it and I know the kids did too. I will forward copies of the thank you letters to you whenever the organizations send them."
Thanks again to all of you who contributed, this was a huge success. We plan to do more stuff like this in the future.
Next on the agenda: The First Annual Spitblood TCU Charity Golf Tournament to be played in Fort Worth sometime around August. Stay tuned.
