Boarding For Breast Cancer (B4BC) wrapped up another amazing winter season of educational outreach with presence at over a dozen action sports events this winter season, including stops at ESPN’s Winter X Games, Union Square Street Sessions, the U.S. Open of Snowboarding and Superpark 11, spreading our message of Early Detection + Active Lifestyle = Best Prevention!
The busy winter season kicked off to a great start January 22-24 at the SIA tradeshow in Las Vegas. The YARD, a hip and cultural new exhibit to the tradeshow, hosted an art auction benefiting B4BC’s efforts. Each day an acclaimed artist created a piece of work live in The YARD and auctioned it off at the end of the day. The YARD fundraised over $1,200 for B4BC’s efforts!
Directly following SIA B4BC rolled into Aspen, CO for the world-famous ESPN Winter X Games as part of the Team ESPN tent. Thousands of X Games fans from around the world poured into the tent throughout the course of the weekend, providing B4BC with a phenomenal opportunity for educational outreach! Also, as part of the festivities, B4BC had some offsite fun with a sold out benefit concert at the Belly Up Club featuring music from Helles Belles an all girl AC/ DC tribute band! Polar Revolution snowboard shop in downtown Aspen hosted a silent auction for the cause and dedicated a B4BC window display to showcase the three auction items that included a pink custom Vespa and two Paul Frank bicycles! B4BC had additional support onsite from Plum TV, KSPN, and Yak Trax!
After X we headed into our annual Board-a-thon series, which were held at five fantastic resorts across the nation this season, including Waterville Valley, Hunt Hollow, Killington Resort, Crystal Mountain, and Stowe Resort. Through contests, auctions, raffles, and concerts, each resort found creative ways to raise funds and increase breast cancer awareness in their community. With nearly 400 competitors throwing down for the cause this season we thank all of the mountains and individuals that work so passionately to team up with B4BC to make a difference in your community!
In early February, B4BC had the opportunity to take the educational booth to New York City. We were onsite for outreach at two incredible rail jams, the Central Park Winter Jam and NYC’s first ever major pro snowboarding contest, the Union Square Street Sessions presented by Jeep. The event attracted the likes of Marc Frank Montoya, Eddie Wall, and Lucas Magoon for an urban jib jam to remember. Each event provided B4BC with a unique opportunity to spread our message to a new target audience as booth visitors swarmed in via the subway system rather than a chair lift!
The middle of March brought B4BC to Stratton, VT to celebrate Burton Snowboards 25th Annul U.S. Open of Snowboarding. Despite the major snow storm that hit the East Coast that weekend, thousands of Open fans pushed through the heavy snowfall to enjoy this premiere event and literally dug a path to get educated at the B4BC booth! During the Open B4BC also had the opportunity to hang out with the amazing kids from Burton’s Chill Program. Chill is an intervention program for disadvantaged inner-city kids that teach at-risk kids (in 14 different cities) to snowboard over six weeks each winter. B4BC thanks Chill and the kids as a number of them helped out in the B4BC booth throughout the weekend!
Also hosting events to help B4BC’s efforts this season were Big Bear Mountain who hosted a B4BC Casino night fundraiser with Nikita to kick off their notorious Wide Open Week #4; Cranmore Mountain and Burning Boards snowboard shop hosted their annual Pink Ribbon Jibbin contest to raise awareness and funds for B4BC’s efforts; and UCLA and the Southern California Collegiate Snowsport Conference did their part by hosting awareness and fundraising events with B4BC onsite for educational purposes!
Last month B4BC wrapped up the 2007 winter season onsite in Keystone, CO for Snowboarder Magazine’s exclusive, Superpark 11! Keystone and Snowboarder teamed up to produce an entertaining fundraising opportunity for B4BC by hosting a Pro bachelor auction! The auction featured the likes of Eddie Wall, Pat Moore, Scotty Arnold and a surprise auction of bachelorette, Hanna Beaman!
For the sake of our younger supporters we won’t mention everything that went down on the runway, but we will say that all of the athletes were great sports and helped raise nearly $5,000 for B4BC’s outreach program.
We would also like to recognize three high school seniors, Nadja Strikovic, Jennifer Parra, and Andrew Kosicki, who produced B4BC awareness events this winter season to fulfill their senior project requirements. Nadja and Jennifer from Parkway South H.S. in Manchester, MO, hosted an awareness event at their local mountain back in January as part of a Hooked on Health week at Hidden Valley Resort, MO. The production of the event was to fulfill their senior project for the DECA organization. DECA helps students with an interest in business to develop skills and competence for marketing careers, to experience leadership and to practice community service. Their B4BC project landed them a second place finish in their regional DECA competition and qualified them to compete in the National competition!
Andrew Kosicki, a snowboarder and student from the snow blown city of
Buffalo, New York teamed up with his high school in West Seneca to help
raise breast cancer awareness in his community and school by representing B4BC in his schools 19th annual Charity Fest, a fundraising and awareness event for local non-profits in the Western New York area. Andrew’s B4BC campaign raised over $1,700 for B4BC’s efforts.
It was a busy and wonderful winter season and B4BC would like to thank all of the companies, mountains, and volunteers who contributed to B4BC’s campaign this winter season making it an exceptional year for outreach! We would not be able to have the impact that we do without your incredible support and commitment to our cause. Thank you for helping us make a difference!
