In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Citizen preparedness and touch football are not usually found in the same sentence. But thanks to my Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) teammate Janine McGoldrick, they are being linked in a way that will help public readiness in my community. Janine plays in a touch football league here organized by a company called Zog Sports (www.ZogSports.com), She told me that Zog’s leagues have an interesting component to them:

“Each team is asked to pick a charity to ‘play for their cause’. After each game teams are directed to participating bars for happy  hour where the bar will donate 10-15% of what the team eats and drinks to the charities. Additionally, Zog will make an additional contribution to the charity of the team that wins the championship.”

Janine convinced her team, “The Machine”, to make our CERT team (ESNA-CERT) the charitable beneficiary of their eating and drinking as well as any championship cash prize. So, thank you to Janine and the rest of the “The Machine” for supporting preparedness. (The team currently has a 1-1 record so they are still in the hunt for the championship — Go “The Machine”!)

Also deserving thanks is Zog Sports whose motto is “play for your cause.” It turns out that CEO & Founder Robert “Zog” Herzog created the concept for Zog Sports in large part as a result of his experiences during 9/11:

“After arriving late for work, he witnessed his office, which was located on the 96th floor of World Trade Center Tower #1, being directly hit by the first plane. Rob decided to build on the tremendous human charity he witnessed following 9/11 and to help foster community in New York by creating ZogSports, which encourages New Yorkers to maintain perspective and a more balanced lifestyle by having fun while also giving something back to the community.”

Since 2002, Zog Sports has raised $455,000 for its teams’ causes.