Men wear pink in support of cancer

Published: Monday, November 3, 2008

The USU hockey team held a breast cancer awareness fundraiser, centered around Saturdays game, by sporting hot pink jerseys on the court and selling $8 pink T-shirts to students.

“Hockey players don’t really wear pink, and so we want to show the community what a rough-neck group of hockey players can do for a great cause,” said Kristin Peterson, vice president of the hockey team about the fundraiser.

“Our motto was, ‘go big or go home,’” Peterson said.

All of the proceeds from the T-shirts, along with a percentage of the ticket sales, will be donated to the Susan G. Koleman Foundation, Peterson said.

In addition to T-shirt sales, Peterson said the hockey team also had a pink paper airplane-flying competition for the cause and the winner received hockey season tickets.

“We have been wanting to do this for a couple years, and it just never happened, so finally I went to the team and asked them if they wanted to wear pink jerseys and they said, ‘Heck yeah.’” Peterson said.

Walter Voisard, public relations chair and player for the hockey team, said he didn’t mind wearing pink.

“Most of the guys feel a little weird about wearing pink, but I don’t mind it,” Voisard said. “I’m from California.”

Three hundred shirts were ordered for the event and paid for by the hockey team, Peterson said.

“We are not sponsored by the school, we have to raise all of our own money. We bought these T-shirts with our own resources, we didn’t ask for any money,” Peterson said.

Voisard said 175 shirts were sold during the week before Saturday’s game.

“A girl came up while we were selling T-shirts and thanked us for doing this and supporting the cause she was about 20 and a breast cancer survivor and she just started crying and I almost started crying, too,” Peterson said.

Peterson said he hopes this will become an annual event.

“We hope to do this every year,” Peterson said. “This year we bought cheap pink practice jerseys, but next year we want to get nice pink jerseys that we can use every year.”

The stadium holds 2,300 people, Voisard said, and the team hoped “to be turning people away.”

Breast cancer awareness is only the tip of the iceberg, Peterson said.

“We want to get the players in elementary schools, we want to do a canned food drive, just stuff to help around the holidays like Sub for Santa or Angel Trees, just doing something like that and getting them out in the community more,” Peterson said.

Voisard said he has loved doing this.

“Anyone can make a difference if they want to,” he said. “Find something you care about, get people to help, use your resources and you are good to go.”

Photo by Cameron Peterson