Pink Out Soccer Game Kicks Off Friday Under the Lights

Farmington High School's colors are maroon and white, but on Friday the girls varsity soccer team will be wearing pink to raise awareness about breast cancer.

Farmington has done a Pink Out game for four years and was the "brainchild of everyone involved in the program at that time," head coach Steve Jarvis said.

"I wanted to do something that raised breast cancer awareness while also raising money for a local charity," Jarvis wrote in an email to Patch. "The FHS girls' soccer program is very prominent in the community so it made perfect sense to try and do something altruistic by organizing the pink out event." 

The year that the team started doing the Pink Out game, Jarvis said that a "close friend and someone I worked with were diagnosed with breast cancer" and that "both are thankfully survivors." He lost his father in-law, who was diagnosed with a different type of cancer, "in the same time period."

"So, yes cancer has recently been an unwanted part of my life," Jarvis said.

Proceeds from the game will benefit  the Just-B Cancer Free Foundation in Farmington.  Admission to the game will be $3 for students and $5 for adults as a donation to the foundation. The team also plans to sell pink merchandise for the cause from cotton candy and balloons to t-shirts. Younger siblings of players are making Pink Out bracelets to sell. 

The team chose the local charity so that "the girls can see their efforts helping the women in Farmington," event organizer and parent Mia DiTommaso wrote in an email to Patch.

"We have a group of survivors coming to support the game and will be honored with flowers," DiTommaso said. "We highly encourage the entire community to come out and support this great cause and the FHS girls in their effort to fight breast cancer."

The team raised $5,000 last year and the donation helped "fund a mobile mammography van" that spent two days in Farmington, giving 35 mammograms  "to uninsured and underinsured women," DiTommaso said.  

"The hope is the team will raise enough to help the Just-B Cancer Free Foundation sponsor another mobile mammography unit in the spring again and also add an educational element to be brought into the schools to heighten awareness," DiTommaso said. 

Jarvis thanked DiTommaso for her work organizing the Pink Out this year.

"Mia in particularly has been the driving force behind the event, taking it to a whole new level in her attempts to educate and provide a mobile mammogram for local residents," he said. 

The game starts at 7 p.m. under the lights on Al Bell Field at Tunxis Meade against Southington.