Last year, Columbus East held a Cancer Awareness Game when it hosted Columbus North in baseball.
The Bull Dogs will do the same this year when they host the Olympians at 5:30 p.m. at Southside Elementary.
“(East) coach (Jon) Gratz and I talked about it last year, to have some sort of benefit for the game,” North coach Ben McDaniel said. “It was something unique for our boys. Ultimately, all of us have been touched at some point in our life by cancer, and this is just another way of giving back.”
East, which did an Autism Awareness Game earlier this season, sold t-shirts and took up a collection at the North game last year for Pediatrac Cancer Awareness. The Olympians raised $860.
North is following the same script this year and is hoping to come close to that dollar amount.
“We’re always as a coaching staff trying to keep things in perspective,” McDaniel said. “Yeah, we were upset with the loss (4-3 to Terre Haute North Monday) night, but in the grand scheme of things, it is just a game. There’s a lot of other lessons from the game that we can apply to our life.”
Former Olympian qualifies
This weekend will be a big one for former Columbus East track and field athlete Ashley Allen.
On Friday, Allen will compete in the long jump in the Florida high school state championships. The junior will then fly to Indiana to attend the Columbus prom on Saturday.
Allen was a regional qualifier in the long jump for the Olympians last season and finished 10th with a leap of 16 feet. She moved with her family to the Tampa, Florida, area last summer and enrolled at George M. Steinbrenner High School.
Last week, Allen jumped a personal-best 17-1 1/2 to finish fifth in Class 4A (big school) Region 2 and qualify for the state finals. Her jump is the second-best in school history.
Allen also ran 16.85 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles this season. That ranks her eighth on Steinbrenner’s all-time list.
Olympians set for HHC
Next week is tournament week in the Hoosier Hills Conference, with championships to be decided in four of the seven spring sports.
The baseball and girls tennis tourneys will be Monday, Wednesday and May 11. Girls track will be Tuesday at Bedford North Lawrence, and boys track will be May 10 at Seymour.
In baseball, Columbus East opens at home against Bedford, and Jennings County visits Madison on Monday. The East girls tennis team will host Seymour, and Jennings will visit Floyd Central on Monday.
The HHC has gone to a full round-robin schedule in softball this year, so there will be no tournament. Jennings County will host the HHC boys golf tournament May 19 at St. Annes.
The Olympians hosted the first HHC Unified track meet on Saturday. Jennings finished third, and East took fourth in a meet won by Bedford.
North schedules callouts
The Columbus North girls soccer callout meeting will be from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in the school cafeteria for all interested players and their parents. For more information, contact coach Derek Stewart at JDStewart@mainsourcefinancial.com.
The North boys cross-country callout meeting will be at 6 p.m. May 14 in the Northside Middle School cafeteria. For more information, contact coach Danny Fisher at p2endurance@gmail.com or 812-320-8402.
Ted Schultz is sports editor for The Republic. He can be reached at tschultz@therepublic.com or 812-379-5628.
