A resounding THANK YOU to ALL our hard-working committee chairs and to the Board. Their detailed preparation and follow-through once again made everything run smoothly and the 72nd Annual Games a resounding success. Our deepest gratitude also to the hundreds of volunteers who in turn assisted each Chair in getting the work done, we hope to see you back next year. THANK YOU for a job well done.
With all our great advertising this year (including over 35,000 folks viewing one of our boosted posts on Facebook, crashing our web site because of a huge traffic volume on the Friday of the Games weekend) and our most robust pre-sale ticket purchases ever, we had high hopes that attendance would be stellar. Alas Mother Nature threw us a curve ball and gave us one of the hottest weekends of the year. Fortunately the record heat didn’t deter our guests and we did end up with more folks joining us than last year. Our official attendance for Saturday was 13,000 and 6,000 on Sunday, bringing our weekend gate to 19,000.
As many of you were painfully aware one of our struggles the last couple years was with our Eventbrite ticketing system. However those struggles were resolved for this year. There were a few minor glitches that popped up on Saturday morning, but easily resolvable. We are thankful for Rei Ritelis who did the due diligence facilitating the internet connection, Cynthia Lostoski for her work on the Eventbrite side of things and Don Lake for his part as Gates chair the weekend of the Games! Good job!
Field Set Up was a little sparse on Tuesday and Wednesday but relatively painless with lots of volunteers being available Thursday and Friday. Unfortunately Sunday evening and especially Monday found a small number of volunteers struggling to put Brigadoon back in the box. At the end of the day only six remained standing to unload the final truck into the storeroom. The youngest, at 40, to the oldest, at 75, provides a sad but true commentary on the greying of the SSHGA and our inability to attract a younger and stronger volunteer base.
We must give a shout out and very special thank you to Barb McBride and her crew for the great eats they provided to our volunteers during the set up/take down process.
We look forward to seeing everyone at our Annual General Meeting on October 9. You will find us voting on our slate of officers for 2019 plus brainstorming ideas to make our upcoming Heather Tartan Ball on November 3 a successful fund-raiser to benefit the 2019 Games. So please join us!
Sincerely, The SSHGA Board
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