Kiwanis, Ray’s to host golf tournament

A few openings remain for entries in the annual Ray’s Food Place and Kiwanis Club Charitable Funds Golf Tournament, according to tournament co-chairman Jeff McDonald. The event will be held Saturday, May 20, at the River’s Edge Golf Course in Bend.

Registration for the four-person scramble may be made by phoning McDonald at 549-2222 or co-chairman Bill Duehren at 549-2012. The entry fee of $100 covers greens fees, carts, a barbecue lunch, and refreshments at tee-off time and on the course, McDonald explained.

“We have openings for four-person scrambles in both the morning and afternoon schedules,” McDonald said. “There will be merchandise totaling $1,000 in team prizes, many individual prizes, and a $10,000 hole-in-one prize for a specified hole.”

Morning tee-off time is 7:30 a.m. and afternoon tee-off time is 1:30 p.m., McDonald said.

This is the 11th year that Ray’s Food Place has participated with the Kiwanis Club in sponsoring the event.

“The number of entries was dropping the year before we joined with Kiwanis and a profit of only $2,200 was realized for local community programs,” McDonald said. “Within two years after we started inviting our vendors and our company’s personnel from throughout the region to participate, we were realizing a profit of over $20,000.”

Under the agreement of the two sponsors, Kiwanis receives the first $5,500 of the profit for their community programs and the two sponsors then split the remaining profit. “Ray’s then takes its share of the profits and directs it towards specific community services, such as SOAR scholarships, the skateboard park, and Cliff Clemens Park,” McDonald explained. “The bottom line is that all of the profits go to support local needs.”

Kiwanis Club of Sisters is one of several local organizations that raise funds to support local community and youth programs.

For the fiscal year ending in October, $21,295 has been donated or committed to local services including:

SOAR (Sisters Organization for Activities and Recreation); SMART (Start Making a Reader Today); Ronald McDonald House in Bend; Camp Fire; Boy Scouts; Hospice of Redmond and Sisters; Cliff Clemens Park; Sisters Food Bank Christmas Food Share.