Happy Hour Bowling Event Brings in More Than $12,000

The Happy Hour bowling event last weekend in Pikesville brought in $12,396 for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Maryland, said Paula Bragg, director of strategic marketing for the organization.

Happy Hour was the largest event of the two-day fundraising event Bowl For Kids Sake.

For Happy Hour, businesses got bowling teams together, paid $100 per participant, or $1,000 or more for an event sponsorship.

Wells Fargo was the top-earning team, bringing in $4,000, Bragg said. That team consisted of Jasmine Burnside, Veronica Cool, Craig Gajewski, Greg Modesto, Nancy Politisch, Alex Politisch, Jose Teixeira and Richard Yoskey.

The highest-earning individuals for the event were Cool, who brought in $2,415; Carl LoFaro, $1,500; and Yoskey, $1,038.

The $12,396 raised "means that 13-14 youth will be served, in addition to those (numbers) we served last year," Bragg said.

Dave Polonsky lives in Columbia these days, but for the Happy Hour event he was back in his old stomping grounds at , helping out Big Brothers Big Sisters.

"I was in the duckpin league here when I was 10 or 11," said the employee of Atapco in Baltimore, a Randallstown native. His team from Atapco, American Trading and Production Corporation, called themselves "Atapco Strike Force" for the event.

Team captain Stephen Bass said the company saw that other companies were participating, so the decided to participate as well. "We thought it was a worthy cause."

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Maryland has matched more than 2,000 children with mentors, but the need is still growing. In the Baltimore area alone, there are more than 850 boys on the waiting list, a spokesman said.

The money during Bowl for Kids Sake helps match kids with mentors.

Find information on Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Maryland Mentoring Project at http://www.biglittle.org/.