BY CHARLES CHANEY
ROSALIA, Kan. — One thing about small communities is their hearts are three sizes larger than the population living there.
That was evident in the first annual Mustang Strong Night at Flinthills High School on Friday night. The Flinthills Booster Club and the community came together and raised more than $13,000 for Lacey Breech and Shari Scribner.
It’s the power of a community that knows how important is it to support each other.
“They are both people that we all have connections with,” Flinthills Booster Club president, Tresa Garcia said. “My brother graduated in the same class as Shari and I knew the Scribners’ growing up right up the road from us.
“Lacey’s mother was everybody’s kindergarten teacher for a lot of years. We knew their struggles and they were a good place to start and try to help our community and make this an annual event.”
Garcia had a goal in mind but raising $13,000 in one night didn’t cross her mind.
“I don’t think any of us dreamed over $13,000,” she said. “We had some goals and ideas but this exceeded all of our goals.”
Breech was diagnosed in March of 2023 with an inoperable diffuse midline glioma brain tumor in March of 2023. She’s a Flinthills high 2007 graduate. She played volleyball, basketball, rodeo, Student Council and was a member of the national honor society while at FHS. Breech’s mother taught at Flinthills for 30 years.
Shari is a 1990 graduate of FHS. She also played basketball and volleyball for the Mustangs. She also contributed in foresenics, theatre, band and was a member of the Flinthills baseball team before they had softball. In 2012, she was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. After going into remission, it reappeared in 2021. She currently is working as an archivist at Emporia State University.
The Flinthills Booster club came up with the idea for a Mustang strong night, something they hadn’t done before. Give them a chance to raise money for a good cause in the community. It started by word of mouth, only to see if there was interest of a silent auction. That didn’t really start until Jan. 30 when someone reached out to see if they were doing and wanted to donate items. By the end of the day, there were over 50 items from all over the community donated and the items kept pouring in up to Friday’s auction.
“Someone asked if they could donate something and that was at like eight in the morning,” Garcia said. “By the time it reached about noon, we had over 30 people who had donated items for the auction.
“In the end we ended with 52 items that were auctioned off and some was they were walking in the door on Friday night.”
Neither of the Lacey or Shari were able to be in attendance because of their health status but they both sent messages of gratitude that were read over the loudspeaker before the start of the varsity games to a packed gym there for a great cause.
Dozens showed up to the basketball game on Friday night, unknown about the now annual event. Some of the auction items were a load of gravel, stud horse fee, cuts of beef & pork, brome & prairie hay bales, mustang apparel, lawn chairs, jewelry, gift baskets, pies, cakes, art, quilt and gift certificates. Even MCS Services offered to match money raised through the silent auction, up to $1000.
The Booster Club even used Facebook as a way of taking in auction bids.
“Facebook was kind of last minute,” Garcia admitted. “We even had a few bids by text that we were able to get in there.”
One of the prizes of the night were pies from Phyllis Jackson. An award-winning pie maker in the community sold two pies for $1200 each. Her coconut cream pie was the initial prize but the second place bid said if they could get him a lemon meringue pie from Phyllis, he’d match the $1200. She was more than willing to help out.
“It was just got more and more exciting through tonight, as we just kind of watch things happening,” Garcias said. “When I went we were adding up to how much we brought in, I was tearing up. I could barely choke out at the total because I was so it was just overwhelmingly emotional to be able to do that in our tiny little community.”
There were 50-50 drawings, where you buy raffle tickets and you get to keep half of the announced final prize. It brought in $700 by itself. Stacey Scribner won the prize and donated it back to the cause. There was a donation jar, 3-point shooting contest and plenty of Mustangs Supporting Mustangs apparel was available for purchase for a donation.
Flinthills Booster Club is hoping to make this an annual event, helping those in the community facing significant health challenges.
“We’d really like to make this an annual event,” Garcia said. “We kind of hope there is nobody that would need to help in another year, right? But, we would like to go ahead and develop a fund that we could have available if someone does have a need.”
