Parents, Family and Friends of Gladiator Baseball,

As you hopefully know by now, the Italy Gladiator Baseball team will be hosting a fundraising Chili Cook-Off on Friday, November 2, which will be senior night for the football team against Dallas Gateway. The cook-off will be held in the high school cafeteria from 4:30 p.m. until all the chili is gone! The money raised will be used to pay for new uniforms, caps, baseballs, bats, and hopefully a new pitching machine, if enough funding can be raised.

The cook-off will have two categories: Mild and Spicy, with the judging done by the IHS coaching staff. The winner of each category receiving an Italy Baseball hat.

If you are the parent of a Gladiator Baseball player, your son was given tickets to pre-sell and a parent contact sheet at a meeting held by Coach Ward last week. Please encourage him to continue to sell tickets and to plan on returning money and any unsold tickets to Coach Ward by Thursday, November 1st. Also, please take a few moments to fill out and return the parent contact sheet to Coach Ward as well.

With all that being said, we are still in need of donations and volunteers! We need parent volunteers to make not only this event successful, but the upcoming baseball season a success as well. You may recall that last season, the parents, friends, and family of Gladiator Baseball hosted a hamburger fundraiser that resulted in over $1500 that assisted with the costs of equipment and other needs for our varsity and junior varsity baseball teams.

Meal tickets will be $5.00 each — includes a bowl of chili, a beverage and dessert.

For each away game, parents and others donated snack items and bottled water for every team member. Our parents and others volunteered in our concession stand at every home game. We were able to feed a hamburger or hot dog meal after each home game to every team member and we were also contributors to the Gladiator Booster Club Scholarship fund.

To make our inaugural Chili Cook-Off a huge success, we need donations of the following items:

• Canned soft drinks
• Bottled water
• Cornbread
• Crackers
• Grated cheese
• Desserts
• Napkins
• Cups

(Please send any canned drink or bottled water donations to Coach Ward at the high school by Wednesday, Oct. 31st, if possible.)

Most importantly, we still need volunteers to help set up, serve, and clean up afterwards. We also ask that you spread the word, invite as many as possible, and join us for an evening of chili and to, “Talk a little baseball!”

Please contact Head Coach Josh Ward at [email protected] to let us know what you can do to help make our event a success!

Italy Neotribune sends a special thanks to: Lisa Jacinto