It’s one of the biggest days of the year for the Notre Dame Hounds community, and organizers are hoping it turns into one of the best ever.
The seventh annual It’s A Hounds Thing Day fundraiser in support of Athol Murray College of Notre Dame will take place today, Thursday, May 2, with a goal of raising $125,000 for programs at the Wilcox, Sask.-based school.
“It’s a 24-hour event that we do online, and we promote what’s special about Notre Dame to our alumni and our friends and we hope that inspires people to give back to the school,” said event organizer Dave Harazny. “We’ve been doing it for a number of years and we pack it all into one day to raise funds for our annual fund, and we’re hoping it goes really well again this year.”
SportsCage.com and Harvard Media are joining forces with Notre Dame in support of the event, with the crew from CKRM broadcasting live from Wilcox on May 2 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in order to help further drive donations and support.
A host of celebrity Notre Dame alumni will be part of the show, including Jayden Schwartz of the Seattle Kraken, former Toronto Maple Leafs standouts Wendel Clark and Gary Leeman and Nashville Predator general manager Barry Trotz.
“We have a lot of them,” Harazny said with asked about famous alumni helping out the school. “We have a rich 100-year history and there are a lot of alumni out there. They like to support the school, it means a lot to them.
“This is all about creating awareness and bringing back the memories that are so special to each and every Hound, that’s what ‘It’s A Hounds Thing’ name comes from. Every student has their own Hounds ‘thing’ that reminds them of their time here, it’s a special place and this inspires them to help the school out.”
All the funds raised will go to a variety of areas at Notre Dame, including academic programming, athletic programming, spiritual programming and student activities, in addition to equipment for the myriad sports teams, community service initiatives and student bursaries.
And needless to say, $125,000 will go a long way to helping things out.
“That would be awesome for one day,” Harazny said. “That’s our goal, it’s a bold goal, and we’ve come close in recent years so we’re hoping to push past that this year and we’re hoping the initiative with the SportsCage will help with that.”
Donations are now being accepted at giving.notredame.ca, with the website offering a variety of fun incentives to help with fundraising.
“It has our goal and a thermometer, our match-gift information, some donation information so different decades can compete against each other,” Harazny said. “Then there’s a map where people are donating from, a donor wall where people can leave messages when they give a gift. It’s our main source of info for It’s a Hounds Thing Day and hopefully we’’ll see a lot of visitors.”
For more on Notre Dame and what they have to offer, visit www.notredame.ca, and be sure to follow along with all the sports news in the province at www.sportscage.com.
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