Everyone knows someone who’s been touched by breast cancer.
For the 15th straight year, the Rally for a Cure golf scramble at Maysville Country Club on Oct. 1 will provide an opportunity for people to do something about it — raise money for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
Bettsy Kalb, an organizational committee member, said the event has “been steadily able to raise $10,000 to send in to the Komen foundation.”
And so the organizers are setting their goal a little higher this year at $12,000.
“Last year we were actually over the $10,000 (mark), we were close to 11,000, so each year we just try to up it by 1,000 if we can,” Kalb said by phone Thursday.
The country club has enough golf carts to accommodate 72 participants, though Kalb said “once or twice” a few more have signed up.
“We usually always max out,” she said. “Some years we have some that’ll, if we go over 72 (players), they’ll just walk and carry their clubs or use the pull cart … just to come participate with us.”
The entry fee is $60 for club members and $65 for non-members. Businesses or individuals can sponsor a hole for $100, and the committee’s goal is to sell 72 of those sponsorships.
The event also sponsors a “memory tree,” where “if you’re not able to sponsor a hole but want to do something in memory or in honor of someone, we just do ribbons on that for our tree also,” Kalb said.
All that money goes to the Komen Foundation, Kalb said.
“We have a lot of businesses that just like to do it just for advertisement,” she said. “We’ve also a few years had campaigns where we get a lot of political donors that like to advertise for their campaign also.”
The field’s makeup is usually split “about half and half” between club members and non-members, Kalb said.
“This is just an event that is open to nonmembers, so we do get a lot of spouses that would not normally come out and play in a tournament or a fundraiser, and they like to invite out-of-town guests and friends, and some of ’em have the same team every year and invite the same friends every year,” she said.
Kalb and her husband Kent, a Flemingsburg dentist, have their own breast cancer-related story.
“His assistant was diagnosed with breast cancer and battled for about a year and lost her battle with breast cancer,” Kalb said.
And, as such, she recognizes that everyone has been affected by the disease somehow.
“We didn’t originally start this with an intention to honor somebody, it was just something that we felt would be good for the community,” Kalb said. “But it seems like every year … a family member or a friend of somebody has a connection with somebody that has either lost a battle to it or is a survivor.”
The Komen Foundation, headquartered in Dallas, has area chapters in Lexington and Cincinnati. It’s “dedicated to education and research about causes, treatment, and the search for a cure” for breast cancer, its website said.
The foundation’s late namesake, Komen, died of breast cancer. Her sister Nancy G. Brinker then started the foundation in 1982.
Donations are tax-deductible, Kalb said. The Komen tax identification number is 75-1835298.
Play begins on Oct. 1 at 10 a.m., with lunch provided. For more information or to sign up, call Kalb at 606-564-5063, Doris Hensley at 606-883-3322 or the club pro shop at 606-564-6351.
