This year’s raffle helped pay for utility building at Eagles’ softball

NORTH ROBINSON — Ron Burkhart and his wife, Marcia, always leave the annual Colonel Crawford Athletic Boosters Club dinner early.

“Ron’s wife is the organist at their church so they leave a little early to get home since they get up early on Sunday,” said Mark Teynor, raffle chairman of the booster club.

Ron said he and his wife were getting ready for bed Saturday evening when their son called.

“He said, ‘Dad, you better get back here right now.’ I told him we were all ready for bed and why would I do that. He kept insisting we had to come back. He finally told me that they had drawn my name for the Corvette and said April Fool’s and hung up,” Ron said with a laugh.

A few minutes later, the couple received a call from the booster club’s president, Travis Koschnick.

“That is when I realized I had really won,” Ron said.

Marcia said she normally buys the tickets for the reverse and Corvette raffles each year.

“Ron always says I am luckier than him. Yet this year, he went and bought the tickets and look what happened,” Marcia said as she admired the red, shiny, 1957 Corvette.

Ron said he will enjoy the vette for a while.

“Eventually, the proceeds will probably make their way back to the booster club. They do such an amazing job and are a blessing to the school district,” Ron said. “They do so much for the school.”

One of those things is a new building at the girls’ softball field that was unveiled on Wednesday along with the Corvette presentation to the Burkhart’s.

Teynor said proceeds from the raffles normally total around $100,000 each year from the Corvette raffle and around $15,000 from the reverse raffle.

“The building project cost was $131,000,” said Teynor of the building that consists of a concession stand, garage and restroom facilities.

“We tried one of those small, wooden concession stands for a period of time but this building was very much needed,” Teynor said of the building constructed by local builder, Studer-Obringer.

Colonel Crawford School Board president Tim Ley is ecstatic about the building.

“It is nice to have such a great concession stand, but having the restrooms is amazing. For years, it has been porta pots or pine trees so to have restrooms with running water is wonderful,” said Ley.

Teynor said the 2018 Corvette raffle kicks off in June during the car show in Bucyrus.