Excessive Heat No Match For Volleyball Players Helping Creve Coeur Non-Profit

Five years after moving to this area, the generosity and overall charitable spirit of St. Louis-area residents continues to amaze me. Whether it’s support for a small organization’s trivia night, a large fundraising gala, or even a call for volunteers that has been put out on social media networks, the people of St. Louis always come through. Always.

On Saturday, July 23, the entire St. Louis area was under an excessive heat warning and the mercury topped 100 degrees but that didn’t keep more than 100 participants from playing in the inaugural Sand Volleyball Tournament.

If you don’t know about HavenHouse, boy, are you missing out! Based in Creve Coeur, HavenHouse provides the comfort of home and a community of support for families traveling to St. Louis for medical care. More than half of the families HavenHouse serves reside in Missouri or Eastern Illinois. The remainder comes from all other states and 34 foreign countries to benefit from the advanced medical care available in St. Louis. Some patients, as well as their supportive families, stay at HavenHouse while commuting to the hospital daily for treatments or waiting for a transplant to become available.

But in order to help these patients and families, HavenHouse needs money!

As of March 2011, I joined the Young Professionals Board of HavenHouse and became part of a team dedicated to raising awareness, and money, to support this organization’s mission. It doesn’t hurt that the group of ladies running HavenHouse is so completely amazing that you want to give all you can to help them out.

In addition to happy hours and the group’s annual trivia night (coming up November 19), this year the Young Professionals Board decided to host a sand volleyball tournament…in July…in St. Louis. It was hot!

A week before the event we had 12 teams registered and I was honestly concerned that because of the heat fewer teams would actually show up on tournament day. But it turned out to be the opposite! We ended up having a field of 15 teams with players who braved the heat and played volleyball for six hours at Bar 101 in Soulard before one team was crowned champion. The event raised over $2,100, an amount that will help more than 21 families with their stay at HavenHouse!

The winning team Team Heilla was undefeated and definitely deserved the title. They were followed by To Kill a Blocking Nerd in second, The Bubb Rubb’s & Lil Sis’ in third; and Community Aces in fourth.

The success of this event will most certainly guarantee the tournament will be back again in 2012. But until then, if you want to help HavenHouse, please check out their wish list of needs or visit their website for other ways to assist. They can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

On behalf of the Young Professionals Board and HavenHouse, I thank all of those people who supported our volleyball tournament and who continue to support all of our events through the year. We can’t make a difference without you!

I am only one, but I am one.  I cannot do everything, but I can do something.  And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.  ~Edward Everett Hale

Is there a charitable cause that you support? Please share!