Anna Rota reports on another successful charity event at the Sports Dock
They may have slumped to defeat on the court but UEL women’s volleyball team were winners off it.
For their first comeback at home they held a charity game aiming to raise awareness of Breast Cancer.
Associations such as Breast Cancer Care and CoppaFeel were invited to take part in the event and to encourage everyone to make a free donation to support the research.
Powerful
Sport has always been a powerful vehicle to promote good causes and gather people together.
Given last years “Boobs Day” was a great success, UEL women’s volleyball team decided to repeat and improve the event using their first game at home to promote this great cause and turn their fixture into a charity match.
Support
With pink being the representative colour of this campaign, UEL encouraged a further initiative that saw both the women’s and men’s teams wearing pink uniforms with stickers showing great support for “Team Boobs”.
The “Wear Pink!” message involved the audience as well, who were more than welcome to wear pink and match up with the home team.
‘Enthusiasm’
Despite the UEL teams not getting the results they expected, there was a great audience and atmosphere at the Sports Dock for the event.
Kelsey Blankerts, UEL women volleyball player, said: “We can bring together and gather enough people just representing a good cause and making sure we keep people recognising that it is still an issue we would like to raise money for.”
Alex Porter, head coach of Essex and former GB player, was amazed and surprised by the great participation and enthusiasm for this event. She said: “Sport is a great vehicle to advertise different messages including charity… It puts the “Team Boobs” in front of everyone.”
Porter added: “Everyone is walking around with pink stickers on and it will be something they will talk about when they get home and they will carry on talking about as it is a great vehicle to promote messages especially one as crucial as cancer awareness.”
Amazing
An amazing audience, amazing team and an even greater atmosphere made it possible to raise a significant amount of money for the organisations working in this project.
As published on the Facebook page of UEL Volleyball Club, Breast Cancer Care raised a total amount of £215; while CoppaFeel raised £123, for a total of £338.