Another Capital Campaign sponsored event?

Mt. Lebanon Hall of Champions Celebration Hi Everyone, I wanted to let you know of a very important celebration coming up later this fall and ask for your help.  The Blue Devil Club is sponsoring our first (of what we hope will become annual) Hall of Champions Celebration!  This is an event that I have wanted to get off the ground for awhile now.  I wanted to have an event where we celebrated the history and tradition of ALL of our sports in Mt. Lebanon.  I believe this has the potential to be a really fun night for our alumni, coaches, parents, and friends of Mt. Lebanon Athletics.  In addition, I believe this will become an important fund raiser for our athletic department. Please see below a post card invitation to the event.  I would certainly love to see all of you at the event but would ask you to please forward the post card to your parents and people within your organization as well as anyone else that you feel would be interested. Thomas Donati, Head Coach Mt. Lebanon Aqua Club  If you have any questions, please reply to:coachmikek@mlacswimming.com

Hall of Champions Celebration post card invitation

This email was sent by
Mt. Lebanon Aqua Club (MLAC)
PO Box 14684, Pittsburgh, PA, 15234 United States 

The consumer flu that won't go away

"It seems like there is no effort to reduce the debt, reduce expenses, sacrifice a little... just increased taxes and incessant fundraisers in every direction -- pretzel sales, KONA ice trucks, the uptown taste fest, sports team shakedowns from the Blue Devils Club (6 months after the raffle you better pay us $25 for your unsold ticket) yada, yada. I feel like I am under constant pressure to buy something. It's like a consumer flu/plague that won't go away."

When this comment came through last night, I thought it deserved its own post. I don't know much about pretzel sales, ice trucks, or the Blue Devils Club. [Why am I thinking of this song as I type?]

But I do know about the Taste of Lebo: Battle of the Appetizers. Today, Mt. Lebanon Foundation of Education is hosting the first annual Taste of Lebo. 

From the School District website:

Local Lebo restaurants will be offering special appetizers for participants to enjoy as they stroll up and down Washington Road while listening to the best of our student music ensembles. Tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for Seniors Citizens and students. Throughout the afternoon, students in the 5th grade chorus, the Jefferson Middle School jazz ensemble, the elementary strings group, the double quartet, and a number of percussion ensembles will entertainment our savvy tasters. 

This event is sponsered by the Mt. Lebanon Foundation for Education. The foundation provides funding for extraordinary and innovative learning opportunites while expanding the boundaries of learning by supporting teacher-driven projects. Visit our site atwww.mtlsd.org/MLFE. 

To order tickets go to: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/taste-of-lebo-battle-of-the-appetizers-tickets-15528605477 

For more information, contact Alyssa DeLuca at adeluca@mtlsd.net or 412-325-8201.

I am curious about the "sports team shakedowns," if anyone has more information about that.

A weight room without weights is just a room

An email sent by Athletic Director John Grogan made its way to me this morning. It appears that there is no money available to equip the state-of-the-art weight room that is going in the high school. Here is his letter:

Hi everyone, 

I am writing with a favor to ask. As many of you know, we will be getting a terrific new weight room in our new facility. However, the equipment for the new facility was not part of the project. Therefore, we have had to privately raise funds to pay for the equipment. Our goal is to put the best equipment in the space to meet the needs of our student athletes! Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, our fund raising efforts have fallen short and we still have to raise a significant amount of money. 

The good news is that we received a terrific lead gift from a gentleman named Preston McMurry from the class of 1955. Preston donated $50,000 dollars toward the weight room!! However, we still have a ways to go. 

Please find attached a letter that I put together that I would ask that you send to your parents, alumni, or any other groups that support us to help raise the money we need to equip the room properly for our student athletes. Feel free to change the letter as you see fit – just wanted to provide an example. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. 

As you will see in the letter, donations can be sent to the Blue Devil Club and we would ask that they fill out the donation card or make sure that they write weight room in the memo line. I have worked with the Blue Devil Club to ensure that all donations for the weight room are put into a separate account to be specifically used for the equipment to go into the room. 

Again, I know this is unusual but as you have seen in the past we have a good plan for that room and I’m hopeful that we can raise the money to provide the equipment our teams need to succeed. 

In advance, thanks for any help that you provide!!

John

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Another Country Heard From UPDATED

By now, you have received your 2012 letter from The Blue Devil Club. I am glad to see that they took some time to draft a new letter.  It is interesting to compare this year's to last year's letter. The 2011 letter "pitched":

• However, this continued success is even more impressive when you consider that our student-athletes also maintained a collective QPA in excess of 3.25!

• Over 91% of the total funds raised by and through the Blue Devil Club are spent specifically on the student-athletes.

 I hope it was an oversight, but those two statements would be worth repeating if they were true this year. In light of the Joint Maintenance Agreement, sports groups' 990's and the YSA, perhaps over 91% of the total funds were not spent on the "student-athletes." The 2011 letter also mentioned that:

ln the past, the funds were spent to upgrade athletic facilities and/or equipment, assist the Club‘s member sport teams meet temporary shortfalls in their ability to raise the funds necessary to meet annual expenditures, and to provide the “extra things” that help give our student-athletes a first class experience that they will never forget!

What annual expenditures? The YSA's inability to contribute $30,000 a year to maintain School District fields? Zero dollars are spent on Municipal fields. Yet, in the YSA's own words, the best baseball fields are Middle and Wildcat which happen to be Municipal fields. When will the Mt. Lebanon Scholastic Athletic Association, a.k.a. The Blue Devil Club, which includes the following varsity sports: baseball, boys' and girls' basketball, cheerleading, football, boys' and girls' soccer, fast pitch softball, boys' and girls' tennis, softball, volleyball and wrestling start contributing to the municipality for the use of their facilities? Why must the 78% of the households who do not have children in school be expected to fund this organization? Levels of support range from an individual or family membership ($25) to Blue Devil Champion ($1000 or more).

Update July 31, 2012 11:15 PM
Blue Devil Club 2009 990
Blue Devil Club 2010 990
Blue Devil Club 2011 990