You may have heard of bake sales, raffles, and talent shows for school fundraisers, but you probably haven’t heard about this.
At Culver High School, one fundraiser is donkey basketball
Yes, you read that correctly.
Along with the familiar gym setting and cheers from the crowd, the clicks and clacks of donkey hoofs rang through the air.
“Oh, it’s 100% donkey, 0% you,” said Jace Silbernagel, a Donkey Basketball participant and Reporter for the Culver Future Farmers of America.
100% donkey is right, as the Culver FFA Donkey Basketball game took Culver High School by hoof Saturday Night.
“Teams get together and they get sponsored by other businesses within our community and sometimes outside of our community,” said Andrea Brown of McDonalds.
Eight teams of four riders competed furiously throughout the night as more than 200 spectators watched.
Diving for a loose ball, shooting lay-ups, and racing down the court, all without letting go of their donkey.
“Well when you ride an ass this size, it hurts quite a bit when you dive,” said Ron Oliver, a Donkey Basketball Participant.
“You just do what the donkey is going to do and kind of go with the flow,” said Brayen Macy, a Donkey Basketball participant and the Former Treasurer for Culver FFA.
Though some of the animal partners may have been a bit stubborn, no one made an ass of themselves at this competition, with roughly $7000 raised for the FFA.
“If we don’t support FFA, then it dissolves within our future and we don’t want that so that is why our community is striving really hard to support these FFA kids,” Brown said.
This is the third year of Donkey Basketball for Culver FFA, barring a COVID hiatus, but the group hopes to keep this tradition galloping along.
“You don’t know where you’re going, but it was fun,” Silbernagel said.
No matter what the final scoreboard says, the real winner is the Culver FFA and the people who get to watch others fall off of donkeys.
