Great weather and a shared mission to help the environment brought scores of golfers out for the 10th annual Otto’s Golf Fest Monday morning.
Supporters came to have some fun and help raise money for the ClearWater Conservancy.
The event is sponsored by Otto’s Brew & Brewery along with a number of community businesses and it attracted 208 golfers this year.
Jennifer Shuey, ClearWater Conservancy’s executive director calls this her organization’s biggest fundraiser of the year. She hopes to raise $75,000, “We are very blessed with great community support for conservation,” she says. “Not only does it bring in a lot of businesses and corporate sponsors into the ClearWater family, but it seems to have quite a name for itself in the community.”
When all is said and done, the annual golf tournament will have raised a grand total of $375,000 over the past decade. Shuey says the money helps pay for, “conservation, restoration and environmental education in the central Pennsylvania community.”
It’s an all day thing. Some golfers tee off early in the morning. There’s also an afternoon session, which seems to be a little more popular. There’s no shortage of food, with breakfast, lunch and dinner all available at different times of the day.
Paul Babitzke was perched on a golf cart, waiting to tee off in the afternoon session. Babitzke is a professor of biochemistry at Penn State, a dedicated supporter of ClearWater Conservancy, and an enthusiastic golfer.
He claims to be one quarter of the only foursome that’s played together for all ten years of the Golf Fest. His mission is clear, says Babitzke, “Well, we get out there and hack the ball around and have a couple of beers along the way.”
On a more serious note, he says, “It’s for a great cause. … I think they do a good job of trying to restore the wetlands in this part of the country.”
ClearWater Conservancy is currently working on a big acquisition project and hopes the state will award a grant to pay 50 percent of the funding for that purchase. Because the agency is negotiating with landowners, details have not been made public.
Shuey says ClearWater Conservancy has a three-part mission. The first is a land conservation program that works with landowners to protect their property even after their lifetime.
The second is a water resource protection program that helps monitor and protect the health of streams and groundwater.
The third mission focuses on education — teaching kids about the environment. She says ClearWater Conservancy now sends at least 2,000 kids on field trips to the Millbrook Marsh Nature Center each year.
“I think our community really values what they see around them,” says Shuey. “We can have a beautiful growing vibrant community like State College and the surrounding towns. We can have that and also have the beautiful natural environment; we can protect our drinking water sources; we can have forested vistas, wildlife habitat, connections between people and nature.”
Click HERE for more information about ClearWater Conservancy.
