Story By John Mann

Kate Duncan Smith DAR school in Grant held their first ever Wingfest this past Saturday, drawing in a huge crowd to help raise money for the Patriots football program as well as other DAR athletics.

“The community has been great,” Patriots head football coach Matt Putnam said. “The boosters have been great and the kids have been great selling tickets. This is always a great fundraiser that I’ve done at some other places where it’s still going. Hazel Green has been doing theirs for about fifteen years now and Madison County, which was my last stop, is on year five. It’s just a great fundraiser for everybody and a way to bring the community together.”

The festival featured sixteen different chicken wing recipes cooked up by ten different teams including the football program. Everyone who bought a ticket got one wing from each team and could vote on their favorite by dropping their ticket stub at the booth of their choosing.

All of the chicken prepared for the festival was donated by Tyson, giving the festival enough food to support one thousand attendees.

“We were fortunate enough to have Tyson donate our wings for us,” Putnam said. “We have sixteen thousand wings for ten cooks and we’ve set it up so that everyone can get sixteen wings for fifteen dollars if they pre-bought a ticket. We have judging going on, we have music, food trucks and some local vendors it’s a real community-wide festival.”

In addition to the People’s Choice award for the wings there was also a panel of judges for the competition who picked winners in multiple categories. Shannon’s Wings took the top spot for Most Unique wings, followed by World’s Okayest Wings in both the Hot and Traditional categories. People’s Choice went to none other than the DAR High School football team though, where the wings were being cooked by the coaching staff.

The football team wasn’t the only Patriot athletic program taking part in the event. The baseball team, under coach Todd Lansford, had a hole in one golf contest on the baseball field. Attendees could pay to take a swing at a hole set up in center field with a hole in one worth one thousand dollars, with the person closest to the pin at the end of the day getting one hundred dollars.

“I hope this is something we can keep bringing back,” Lansford said. “The football team put it all together but they encouraged all the teams to put up a booth. This is a good community event and it’s been good for the school and for the town.”

The volleyball team, headed by coach Tanya Broadway, had a cake walk set up with plenty of desserts on offer that were donated by families of the players. Just a few booths away the girls basketball team, along with coach Suzan Howard, had a free throw contest where the person who racked up the most buckets could take home a full sized basketball.

The money raised from the festival ticket sales would go to the football team, but money raised by the other teams went to their respective programs. DAR athletic programs are largely self-funded, so fundraisers like the festival are one of many ways they work to supply equipment, officials, travel expenses and other essentials.

“I think this is a great event,” Broadway says. “Everybody in Grant loves community things like this. We don’t get any money from the central office so we raise all our own funds and I think this is a great fundraiser. This is just one of many things the volleyball teams does because we have a big budget and travel a lot, we even go as far as Orange Beach and play about ten games there.”

Putnam reports that the event pre-sold six hundred tickets leading up to the day of the event, with tickets still being sold at the gate the day of the festival which ran from five pm until nine. You can see a full list of the winners of the wing competition, as well as pictures of the teams, by visiting the football team on Facebook under “DAR Patriots Football.”

The DAR Patriots are kicking off football season this week, hosting the Brindlee Mountain Lions on Friday, August 22. Kick off is set for 7 pm.