By: Savannah Havird
On Oct 4, 2019, Tampa Bay Sporting Clays in Land O’ Lakes, FL, hosted an event called “Breakin’ for Badges: Inaugural Clay Shoot Classic.” This event was in partnership with Saint Leo university and the Dade City Police Department. The purpose of this event was to raise money through fundraisers and raffles to build a “police officer scholarship” to give the opportunity to Dade City police officers to attend Saint Leo University to further their education.
This event brought out many people, experienced and not experienced at all. Joseph Rios, sophomore sports business major and first year ROTC student, stated “I have never shot a gun, but I am excited to try new things.” People from all around the city came out to support this event, including ROTC and criminal justice students from Saint Leo University, Dade City Police and Forensic, and many citizens of the city and surrounding cities.
Everyone got on golf carts and rode to their designated section with their shotguns and score sheets.
This week is the start of Jeffrey Senese’s, President of Saint Leo University, inauguration week. In his speech, Senese explained how Saint Leo University has 5,000+ vets or active service members and that he hopes this event will bring active people to Saint Leo University. Senese met with James E. Walters, Chief of Dade City Police Department, to coordinate this event. Chief Walters performed a speak to thank everyone for coming to this event and supporting men and women to get educated and explained how important it is for him to give his staff the opportunity to further their education.
The event had Charley Belcher, featured reporter for Fox 13, to help the event be more widely known for the years to follow. Belcher stated that he thinks “continuing education of law enforcement officers is very important” He also stated, “I am very happy I can be out here to help the event be known.”
October 7th, 2019 is the start of Jeffrey Senese’s, President of Saint Leo University, inauguration week.
After the speeches and sign-ins were over, everyone got on golf carts and rode to their designated section with their shotguns and score sheets. When they arrived, they would get ready, and yell “pull!” for a clay disk to pop up from different angles which they would shoot. Each person got 8 rounds of shots per section. There were many sections going at one and the groups would rotate to the next section when they were all done with their 8 rounds.
After the groups have gone through all the shooting sections, they would all meet back up where they ate lots of food and called the winners of the raffle prices. Mike Mezrah, owner of Tampa Bay Sporting Clays, said, “We hold many fund-raiser events, but this is the best turn out I have seen for a first year event!”
This event ended up being a great turn out and the perfect opportunity to display the strong connection that Saint Leo University has with Dade City, by successfully raising scholarship money for the police to attend Saint Leo University!
