February marked JRB Thompson’s third successful February Fundraiser.

This year, the girls came through with flying colours, fundraising almost $5,000 for local causes and shooting over 4,000 baskets to do it.

The JRB Thompson basketball club is new to the community and is just on its way to completing its third successful season.

It is a club basketball program for girls only, who just this year implemented a six-month kindergarten to Grade 2 category.

The girls in the program are introduced not only to basketball skills, but concepts that will help them to be leaders and role models in the community.

Coaches work to introduce leadership skills, the value of being part of a team and working together towards a greater goal, as well as the importance of volunteering and giving back to the community that supports them.

The February Fundraiser began two years ago when the Haiti earthquake crisis arose; the girls decided that they would like to help the efforts that the government was making to assist them.

The second season came about, and the girls, having felt great about what they had done the previous year decided that they would like to do something again.

Last year they raised almost $4,000 for books in the community, this money went directly to classroom teachers and schools to fund their classroom and school libraries.

This year the club entitled its fundraiser “Buckets for Breakfast” with hopes in providing the Homeless Shelter and Wapanohk Community School with funds to support the breakfast programs they run through their facilities.

The girls went out into the community collecting donations and pledges for their shoot-a-thon, a one hour event where they had to shoot as many baskets as possible and makes and misses were tallied.

The youngest group had a blast shooting and did a phenomenal job in fundraising close to $2,000 dollars on their own, with the two leading fundraisers McKenzie Baron and Samara Green leading the way with over $300 and $200 respectively.

The Grade 7 and 8 girls came in close behind them adding to the total with almost $1,800, Karly Kraychuck being the leading fundraiser in that group and shooting over 2,500 baskets in their hour time slot.

Nearly $1,000 came from the Grade 5 and 6 girls team, Ellen Hatley being the biggest fundraiser in their group.

The girls were extremely proud to present cheques to Paullette Simkins, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Thompson branch and Bonnie Rempel, principal of Wapanohk Community School, for the amount of $2,358.75. The fundraiser has become something the girls pride themselves on.

As coaches we are happy to see that the teams have found value in giving back to the community that does so much for them and that the goals of the program are being reached.