At Monday’s Hope Lions meeting, Carter Wilcox, who has raised funds to purchase books from the Scholastic company for his class of students at Clinton Primary for more than a year, spoke about the upcoming Nacho Average Trivia Night fundraiser.
This Saturday September 14th, starting at 6:00 p.m. at Hempstead Hall, teams will take part in trivia competition to help raise funds so that Wilcox’s classmates can purchase their choice of books in the upcoming Fall Scholastic book fair. Carter has raised $5,000 so far.
The event will feature a raffle drawing which will have some non-trivial items as prizes, including a pair of cleated shoes used by the late Ryan Mallett during his time as a Houston Texan (pictured below) and a painting by Hope native Steven Walden. Teams of up to eight can compete in the trivia competition. You can also compete as an individual. There will also be a taco-nacho bar.
Carter Wilcox’s parents, Mark and Kelly, filled the Lions in on Carter’s success at a swim meet in Greensboro, North Carolina where he won some of the metal you see him displaying in his picture. He is a member of the Hope Piranha swim team. “I had an eighth place in the 200 meter free and a fifth place in the 100 meter,” Carter said.
The Kellys also spoke out in support of the Hope for the Future initiative, which would lead to the building of a recreation and aquatic center in Hope that could allow swimmers to train all year around, instead of just four to five weeks, and could also host regional swim meets.
Hope is the central location for the South Arkansas Swim Association. Many of the teams in SASA are able to train in indoor pools. “We would be an excellent place to host all these teams,” Kelly Wilcox, who helps coach swimmers in Hope, said of the prospect of hosting a SASA swim meet.
Concerning the donation of the Ryan Mallet shoes, Kelly Wilcox said Ryan’s mother Lauren Mallet Hays of the Mallett Family Foundation heard of Carter Wilcox’s fundraising for the book fair and it appealed to Hays, who is herself a former English teacher. So Hays donated the shoes as well as four VIP tickets to the first annual Pros versus Joes Flag Football event November 9th.
Three items will appear on the November 5th general election ballot that must receive majority votes from Hope voters to finance the aquatic center, a new fire department headquarters, park improvements and maintenance of the aquatic center and parks with a one-cent retail sales tax.
The Lions will provide a fresh catfish and chicken finger dinner with all the trimmings on the UAHT campus for $15 a meal September 26th starting at 4:30 p.m. Much of the rest of the meeting was spent in preparation for this event.
