Monarch varsity softball hosted conference opponent Horizon on Tuesday, but the gathering at Scanlan Field in Superior was about much more than sports. This event marked the team’s third annual “Pink Game”, which Monarch hosts to benefit women fighting against breast cancer.
Through cash donations collected during the game, the players will put together gift bags for women going through chemotherapy. “Our goal is 40 bags,” said head coach Sara Tani, who helped to organize the benefit game.
The team is inspired to help the cause partly because of Michelle Meska, a two-time cancer survivor and mother of a player on the team, Kristina, who is a junior.
“The chemo bags are more of an instant way to help out,” said Meska, who threw out the game’s ceremonial first pitch. When she received a bag on Valentine’s Day of this year while going through chemotherapy, she “thought ‘this would be a great way for the girls just to help the community out and make those ladies feel like someone’s thinking about them.'”
The teams for Horizon and Monarch, both wearing pink shirts, socks, and even hair dye for the game, lined up along the baselines before the game along with their JV teams. Tani explained the cause and honored those families on both sides who had been affected by breast cancer.
“It’s an important cause especially because we are all young females,” said Tani. “I think it’s really special that we remember those who’d like to be out here and can’t because they either didn’t survive or they’re fighting.”
The gift bags will include items such as snacks, puzzle books, scarves, and “little things to make them [the patients] feel appreciated and that they’re part of our team,” said Tani.
Once the team is done collecting additional donations at the end of October, the players will put together the bags and donate them to the Rocky Mountain Cancer Center in Boulder in November.
