Hamilton Sportsmanship Award Night
I'm reintroducing myself to the CASL blog world with this blog post about our most recent Hamilton Sportsmanship Award night, presented by Dick's Sporting Goods. On Saturday, May 16, we recognized 140 of the sportsmanship award nominees at the Carolina RailHawks game. You can see a full list of all winners here.
The night started off with players coming by the CASL tent to pick-up their certificate and commemorative gift pack. CASL CEO Gary Buete, Cindy Hamilton (the daughter of the award's namesake, Pat Hamilton), and our mascot, Cleats, were on hand along with our enthusiastic staff to help congratulate the winners. Thanks to Planet Smoothie, each sportsmanship award winner also got treated to a free smoothie prior to the game!
Our players went home with the certificate, a CASL/Dick's Sporting Goods Tumbler, some trendy CASL/Dick's Sporting Goods sunglasses, a gift card to Dick's Sporting Goods, and an additional free smoothie coupon! They also went home with a memory of being recognized at halftime in front of a near record crowd at the RailHawks game - we paraded onto the field at half-time, as the cheers from the stands helped congratulate these winners for their outstanding displays of sportsmanship this season. As one mom mentioned to me, "it was an experience my first grader, nor I, will soon forget." All of the winners squeezed together on the field for a commemorative photo as well.
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| Group photo with all of our Hamilton Sportsmanship Award Winners! |
Oh, and did I mention that some of our U8-U12 (girls) winners were surprised with a FREE entrance into the TeamFirst Camp (Thanks Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC!) hosted by Mia Hamm on June 21 as an added bonus to their awesome sportsmanship?!?! You can pledge to live fearless with BCBSNC for a chance to send your daughter to this camp hosted at WRAL Soccer Park: http://livefearlessnc.com/pledge-rules/
The CASL Tower was packed on Saturday, and everyone showed their #CASLpride all night. We had more than 330 players nominated this spring by their coach or teammates, and we were thrilled to be able to provide this experience to our players. We've seen this number grow each season, and our goal is to have 100% participation from our coaches in the future.
Thanks, again, to Dick's Sporting Goods and WakeMed Health & Hospitals, who sponsor our good sports!
