Every year Edmond Memorial High School (EMHS) holds the “Taste of Memorial” event in which members of the community pay $15 for admission. This money benefits the Big Booster Club, a parent organization that benefits the sports at EMHS. At the event, attendees tried food from many of the different restaurants in the Edmond/Oklahoma City area while participating in a silent auction. This year it was held on Nov. 11 at Memorial with around 550 people attending and $29,500 being raised.

The biggest part of the event was food that was provided from restaurants such as Taziki’s, Chick-fil-A, Cowboy Chicken, Hurts Donuts, Charleston’s and many more. To set all of this up, the booster requires help from parents and other volunteers.

“A lot of coordination with the school administration and the district [went into planning]. Then we also had volunteers from the Booster club and the coaches of the teams who contributed,” President of the Big Booster Joel Scott said. “We had committees led by Jenny Dickson and Jill Cobb organize the food vendors, and then Stacy Schmidt and Miariam Teifke were in charge of the auction aspects of the event. Not to mention student and parent volunteers that made it all come together.” 

Besides bringing the event together, they also needed help from volunteers to run the event. 

“Student volunteers were needed prior to the event when donations were dropped off at the school about one and a half weeks before the auction. We used STUCO and National Honor Society kids [to help us], so they could get volunteer hours. We also had other students who wanted to volunteer,” Scott said.

The money was raised in order to help the different sports teams pay for the things other funds don’t cover. This can include: team travel gear, scouting software, renting practice facilities, away/home game meals, senior night/banners, homecoming decorations, tournament expenses, hotel expenses and many more.

“The money that we raise off of our auction items goes into a pot for us, and then we would use it for things like hotel rooms and food for track meets, different things like that. It just gives us another resource to use,” Head Girls Track Coach Tyler Sergeant said. 

To receive money from the fundraiser, each sport has the parents and athletes sell tickets and donate a certain amount of items. These items usually contribute to the themed baskets that are auctioned off at the silent auction. These baskets include themes such as a gift card tree or family night.

“Each player was asked to sell several tickets each to the auction/dinner. As a program, we are expected to provide several different themed baskets to auction off during the night of the event,” Head Girls Basketball Coach Rachel Crabaugh said. “Our sport gets back 75% of what auction items sell for, so the more we provide for the auction the more money girls’ basketball makes. This is a huge event where all sports come together and an easy way to make money for our sport.”

Last year, due to COVID-19 the organization turned to an online-only event and were unable to produce the usual amount of money raised because of this. This year, they kept the auction online but brought back the in person portion. To make up for last year, they employed new advertisement techniques to really spread the word.

“This year, we tried to promote the auction more by posting on social media, putting up posters at participating restaurants, and promoting sponsors with banners at the event,” Scott said.

Between those who volunteered and the organizations they worked with, the Big Boosters could not be more appreciative of the hard work that was put into the event. 

“This event is the Booster club’s biggest fundraising event. It took a lot of help from the generous parent sport representatives who volunteer their time and energy to make an event like this a success,” Scott said. “Dr. Rose and Coach Roberts along with all our food sponsors from Edmond and our other sponsors spent a lot of quality time and effort in making this happen. The saying is true it takes a village, and Edmond Memorial has a great supportive village.”

Contact Adeline Gruen at [email protected]