My name is Kate Heagle and I am one of the ASB Foodball chairs for Mount Si High School. We recently finished our annual food drive and it was a huge success! Between Mount Si, North Bend Elementary, Opstad Elementary, Fall City Elementary and Snoqualmie Elementary, we were able to exceed our goal of 25,000 pounds. To date, we have brought in over 26,500 pounds and food is continuing to trickle in even though Foodball is officially over.

I would like to thank everyone who helped support our cause by donating food and money, or helping out in some other way. I would especially like to thank the parents that gave up their days to help deliver food to the various food banks throughout the Valley.

This is the first year that I worked on this project and I was surprised by several things. First, I was amazed and very pleased by how passionate high-school students were about Foodball. There were students who worked with businesses to get donations, helped load the food so it could be delivered and did everything they could think of to bring in food. Not only were high-school students excited, but elementary students were enthusiastic, as well. As I am writing this e-mail, I am still overwhelmed with the amazing generosity of all these students.

I was also met with great appreciation from many of the local food banks. The North Bend Helping Hands, Preston Food Bank and Operation Santa were all very grateful. I found all of them to be a great pleasure to work with and very accommodating to our school schedule. They treated the parents and students that helped with respect and made sure we knew how much they appreciated the food. It was hard each time when we could only bring a certain amount of food. I always found myself wanting to donate more because they were so wonderful.

I wish I could say that I had this same experience and feeling with all of the organizations that I worked with on Foodball, but unfortunately I did not. Even though my experiences were almost exclusively good, there was one organization in the Valley that felt it should have received more food at the expense of other local food banks. I was telephoned at home and berated by one of its spokeswomen after they had received their donation. Maybe the organization didn’t realize that I am a high-school student doing this in my spare time. Myself, along with many others, dedicated large amount of time to make this food drive successful. Unfortunately, there never is enough food to go around and we did our best in dividing up the donation.

Although I am trying not to let this isolated incident ruin the overall feeling of success, it has really made me aware that not everyone is grateful for your efforts.

Thank you again to all those who helped out, I really appreciate it! Without your time, energy and donations, there wouldn’t have been any food for any of our local food banks.

Kate Heagle

Class of 2003 Mount Si ASB Foodball Chair