Bullard group holds donkey basketball fundraiser
Published 10:47 pm Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Reputations were on the line Tuesday as teachers and students faced off in an unusual game of basketball.
Victory was not dependent on athletic ability, but rather the ability to coerce an ornery donkey to trot up and down the Bullard Intermediate School gymnasium.
The teams squared off in a game of Donkey Basketball.
It has similar rules to the traditional game. Participants had to pass and shoot the ball from the donkeys’ backs, but they could walk, drag or sweet-talk the animals without the ball.
“Staying on the donkey — that is the trick, and having some shooting skills,” teacher and Key Club sponsor Jennifer Dorsey said.
The game is played every other year and is the principal fundraiser for the school’s Key Club.
Ms. Dorsey said a portion of the proceeds would benefit the efforts of UNICEF and Kawanis International to eradicate maternal and neonatal tetanus. The rest would help buy supplies for Key Club charity work and projects.
According to UNICEF, maternal and neonatal tetanus is common in developing countries without access to immunizations and sterile birthing facilities. The disease is a swift and painful disease that killed 49,000 newborns in 2013, the organization’s website reads. The illness commonly kills mothers as well.
The fatality rate can be as high as 100 percent without hospital care and between 10 and 60 percent with hospital care, the website read.
Most of the deaths are in Africa as well as South and East Asia.
The seriousness of the cause was in the background Tuesday as the crowd cheered from the stands.
Ms. Dorsey joked before the game there would be no “deflategate” going on in Bullard, a reference to allegations that the Super Bowl champions the New England Patriots were not properly inflating their footballs to make them easier to catch.
“There will be no cheating in this game, but we will wait and see what happens,” she joked.
