Friday, August 22, 2014
LOWELLVILLE
John Carr, Boardman resident and a part-time skydiving instructor, has made more than 3,300 jumps in various kinds of spaces during the past 20 years.
On Sunday, Carr plans to jump out of a plane onto the Lowellville High School football field.
“I’ve jumped into smaller spaces before, so a football field is a pretty big place to land,” he said.
What makes this jump special is that Carr intends to parachute onto the field dressed in a cow suit during the athletic boosters’ annual cow-picking event. The event recognizes the school’s fall athletes and coaches.
John Falconi, associate athletic director, said the event is a fundraiser for the school’s athletic boosters. He said gates open to the public at 4:30 p.m. with the event starting at 5. He said he estimates at least 500 people will attend.
Falconi added the event is free for anyone, but he said spectators can pay $5 for raffle tickets, spirit wear and concessions to raise money for the athletic boosters. He said two winning tickets will be chosen by Carr when he jumps onto the field at 7:15 p.m., and winners will receive cash prizes.
Stacey Harklerode, president of the school’s athletic boosters, said last year the boosters raised $3,200 from the event, with some of the money coming from raffle-ticket sales.
“About $4,000 would be a great goal to raise for this year’s cow picking,” she said. “I haven’t got many tickets back yet, but I’ll likely get them the day of the event.”
Falconi added that not many people in the Lowellville school administration can remember how the cow- picking tradition started, as he said most of the administration is newer. Originally, Falconi said the boosters would bring in a live cow, and spectators would bet on which yard line the cow would — to put it nicely — leave its mark.
Robert Perry, formerly in charge of the Lowellville athletic boosters, said he and a friend got the idea for the event from a Sports Illustrated feature on what one college did in the early ’90s. He said Lowellville hosted its first cow picking in 1992.
“We would make a day of it, watching the cow for three, maybe four hours,” Perry said.
Nancy Grapevine, a past president of the Lowellville athletic boosters, said she thinks the boosters switched from using the live cow to Carr parachuting onto the field in 2007.
“It was a lot of fun back when we were first starting it,” Grapevine said. “The stadium was always packed, and everyone would sit and watch until the cow was done.”
Grapevine said the boosters switched to using Carr after a cow got a little out of control one year, running around the track.
“The event doesn’t quite have the same flavor as it did before,” she said. “But it’s a lot safer now.”