Corsicana Booster Club

Meets every Monday night at the fieldhouse at 7:30.

Thanks for everything you do!

The Corsicana Athletic Booster Club will be chartering a bus to Lufkin game on Oct. 5.  A ticket for the game and a seat on the bus will be $20.00 per person.  Money is due when reservation is booked.  No children under the age of 18 will be allowed without a parent or guardian.  First come basis.  If we fill one will get another. Bus will leave the Corsicana High School Parking Lot @ 3:30. Please call Richard Ruiz @ 872-7279, Danny Kinkade @ 874-1571 or Bill Griggs @ 874-3718 or 872-4756. Deadline will be Sept. 21, 2001.

*My apologies for having the incorrect time up here before*

Also, keep checking back tomorrow night for a big booster club announcement!

 

Corsicana Athletic Booster Club members and various helpers set up the tunnel that serves as the entrance for the Tiger football team last Friday at Texas Stadium. The tunnel adjoins to a 15-foot replica Tiger football helmet and includes blue smoke as the Tigers pass through.Daily Sun photo/SCOTT HONEA

By RAYMOND LINEX II/DAILY SUN STAFF

Some like it, others despise it. Regardless of how people in the stands view it, the Tigers seem to think it's rather cool, entering the stadium with a deliberate stroll through a cloud of blue smoke emanating from a larger-than-life helmet affixed to a tunnel.

"I think it's just classy how they come in," Bill Griggs said. "Most kids run in, but I love the way the Tigers have done it ... walking slowly, holding hands. Being down there with them gets me pumped up."

Griggs is one of a dozen or so Corsicana Athletic Booster Club members that set up that giant helmet - an exact replica of the ones the players wear - and the tunnel. It's a chore that requires the work of several people, especially now that the Tigers are in the playoffs.

The Tigers have used a tunnel of sorts for about four years now. It started with a PVC pipe structure covered with blue weather tarp some very ingenious dad's developed and graduated to the blow-up tunnel now used. This year the helmet was added.

Booster Club President Anele Richardson said the current entrance apparatus has been an ongoing project initiated by past President Gerry Newbury.

"Gerry decided we'd start sticking money back and we bought the tunnel and then the helmet. It took us three years to reach that goal," Richardson said. "The first night we stood in the helmet, it was worth it."

Richardson is continuing a recent trend of strong booster club leaders. About eight years ago, she said, under the direction of Bill Roughton, the booster club started the Tiger Pride membership. For $100, members get a jacket, a hat and a pass to gain entry to all home sporting events throughout all school district levels.

There were about 20 Tiger Pride members initially, but that number is now 72, Richardson said. The booster club itself has almost 200 members.

"Every year it gets bigger," said Richardson, who succeeded Pete McElroy this year as booster club president.

The booster club takes in between $10,000 and $20,000 a year, with individual sports getting to keep 80 percent of the funds they generate. The other 20 percent goes into a general fund.

The booster club has purchased bats, pitching machines, soccer seat covers, shirts for the golf teams and other items for other sports, and it also sells ads for the football program and runs tournaments.

But in the fall on Friday nights at Tiger Field, the club sells programs, runs the Tiger Hut souvenir shop and makes sure the Tigers are entitled to a grand entrance.

"It's an unheralded group of people that doesn't get a lot of recognition," Berry said. "Any successful program has a strong booster club. Those people do so many things that are taken for granted."

Some believe the helmet is taken for granted.

"It's work," Booster Club Football Representative Harold Evans said. "We work at a fast pace; sometimes we have to do it on the spur of the moment."

Said Griggs, "Lots of times we miss the kickoff, and some of the first quarter trying to get it back into storage. But a lot of times we have the best view."

Richardson said as many 20 people help out weekly with the helmet. The job has become more labor intensive in the playoffs, only because the Tigers have and will continue to play all of their games on artificial turf.

"To get that thing up takes about 15 to 20 minutes," Evans said. "The hardest part about it is getting the tunnel to fit up against the helmet. We have to hold it up against the helmet so the smoke stays in. On a regular field, we just stake it in."

Special cartridges burned off of the electrical charge of batteries make blue smoke, which is blended in with a smoke machine to create the blue haze the Tigers enter in. And the tunnel and helmet require blowers, which sometimes require a generator if electricity is not available. That's when the booster club turns to Richard Tate.

"That gets crazy because we have to chase Richard down on Friday nights," Griggs said.

Another challenge is transportation. The helmet and tunnel have traveled with a number of booster club members this season. A trailer to haul the equipment does exist, but not everybody has a vehicle to pull the trailer, Evans said.

For now, the tunnel and the helmet have a home in the back of Mike and Anele Richardson's van.

"We started off the season pulling it on a trailer," Richardson said. "With everybody coming from different spots, Mike just took the back seat out of the van and put it there. We've been riding with a tunnel and helmet for weeks."

There is more to the tunnel than meets the eye, but for the program and the booster club, the work it entails is easily worth it.

"Yeah, because of the kids," Richardson said.

"It's all worthwhile," Griggs said.

"It's all for the kids and it makes them proud to be Tigers."

xxx

Don't be afraid to pull out your wallet Friday night

Corsicana Athletic Booster Club President Anele Richardson said a Dallas-area vendor will be selling Tiger souvenirs Friday at Texas Stadium, including No. 1 foam fingers, hats and T-shirts.

The booster club will benefit. Richardson said the club would receive 25 percent of the profits.