4th Annual Muddy’s Buddies Lax Fest Raises over $13,000: The Afterglow Blog

Contributed by Tim Lawrence

Well, I have to say I called it. The weather was perfect, and the games were perfect-er.

The MB Lacrosse Festival was a HUGE success, and Billy Fucillo had nothing to do with it. The two-day lax extravaganza was held on May 5 and 19 and over 500 athletes played games on almost 50 boys and girls teams under the sunniest of skies, and some people (no names mentioned here, ahem…you know who you are…) did not heed the advice of yours truly when he so sagely and magnanimously suggested the use of sunblock. Apparently some festival-goers were feeling the sun-kisses for several days after.

The Lax Fest raised over $13,000 dollars this year, almost a 20% increase from the proceeds raised in the 2012 festival.  That is a fantastic achievement and the money goes to the Buddies and their families to support them in their struggles with childhood illnesses including cancer. There are now nineteen Buddies supported by teams and clubs across four counties in Western New York.

The dinero came from team entry fees, T-shirt sales, concessions, and raffles of all sorts of cool stuff, but the MB Fest would not have gotten off the ground at all without the “Best Buddy” sponsors. They were everywhere on those two Sundays in May. They were Doyle Chevrolet and Subaru, Brand Integrity!, Rochester Eye Associates, Dunn Tire, Meliora Advisors, QCI Asset Management Inc., Nancy & Friends–Fighting Cancer Inc., Gauss Sales, Inc.

I cannot believe that there were over 400 T-shirts sold, although I will admit I bought three of ‘em. That hot pink color was ssss-weeet.  I really loved that super-charged neon yellow color, but it made my eyes look orange.  All of the raffles raised over $3000 dollars. BTW I would like to talk to one of the people who won the Abby Wambach balls. I would be willing to negotiate. Call me or text me.

The craziest thing was that they sold over 20 pounds of USDA ground beef for the ever-popular and delish Taco-in-a- Bag. If you were there on the second day of the Lax Fest, you might have seen the dude dumpster-diving for bottles and cans. Well, he came up with over 400 returnable bottles (over $21 worth) and about the same number of sports drink bottles. Ya know there’s no refund for the sports drink bottles (like Gatorade or Powerade) but keeping it green and recycling all those bottles is well worth the effort.

But forget all that, the MB Lax Fest 2013 earned some mad cash for all the Buddies. There were great games, sick goals, 16 hours of sunshine and not a single drop of rain. The Great Mud Man would say “Great Job.  The Buddies won, but don’t forget the sunblock.”