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Admin
Last updated
11-06-09 06:32 AM
 
Grafton Chiefs
Chiefs WebMaster
617-780-8850
P.O. Box 50
Grafton, Massachusetts
01519
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Thursday, September 3
Thank you Volunteers
This past weekend for the first time ever Grafton Pop Warner hosted the Annual Central Mass Pop Warner Jamboree. This was an all day Central Mass event with an estimated 2000+ people in attendance. With any large fundraising event it takes many volunteers to make it a success. We were fortunate to have so many people to help us out this past Sunday and we are very thankful for that. In addition, to the number of volunteers, it always takes a few exceptional people to pull something like this off. Elaine and Pete Wojnar were these people for us this past weekend. The Wojnar’s are an extraordinary family. The fact that Elaine and Pete handle concessions for every Grafton Pop Warner home game (and have for years), the fact Elaine and Pete are on numerous boards in town and most remarkable to me is that wherever Elaine and Pete are volunteering so are their sons Danny and Nick. Specific to the Jamboree I would like to mention just a few of the ways in which Pete, Elaine, Danny and Nick helped us out: With Tropical Storm Danny set to hit New England on Saturday there was a real possibility that the game would have to be moved off of the GHS football field. Members of our program met up at the High School late Friday to paint and line the practice area as a back-up plan should the football field be un-playable on Sunday. Who arrives in the infamous Dodge Blue Ram truck with tools galore? Pete and Nick armed with rain gear, stakes, hammers, 500 feet of string and several tape measures, Pete determines the field is nearly perfect after laying out several tape measures (we did have make an adjustment of 2 inches). Pre-event set-up began early Sat evening at where else but the Wojnar’s. Cases of Gatorade, water, ice, countless coolers, bread, candy and of course mountains of food all get loaded into a box diesel truck and trailers most all belong to the Wojnar’s. With some light rain coming down and still some uncertainty about the field conditions for the following morning the Wojnar’s invite everyone into their home to discuss the Sunday morning set-up plan. Sunday morning comes and the weather outlook is fantastic and the field is more than suitable to play on. The massive truck caravan arrives GHS at 6:00 AM; Pete and Danny are in the Box truck and Elaine and Nick are behind in the Blue Ram. Set up begins… this was a start of a very long day. One in which I see Elaine leave the concessions area 1 time, to watch her son’s game. The caravan did not leave GHS until nearly 9:00 PM. Many of us followed the caravan back to the Wojnar’s to help the Wojnar’s unload everything. It was the least we could all do. Our organization could have never pulled this type of event off without the Wojnar family. It takes a lot of people to pull of an event of this size, but Elaine and Pete just make it look easy. I would like to thank Joe Garabedian (The Buggy Whip) and his family. They volunteered their time, equipment, and services to our program for the day. I would also like to thank Alex Chichiolo for organizing the event for our program. Alex has only been on our Board for a short time, but has brought so much to our program. Last but certainly not least special thanks to all of our Board Members, Coaches, Team Moms, Tom Dobat for donating paper goods and Craig O’Brien for donation of breakfast pastry’s and cookies. My apologies if I have missed someone, the list is many. I hope the people of Grafton and all of our Pop Warner families recognize the kind of quality people we have running our program. RG
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