Gary Pinkel hosts seventh-annual golf tournament, as he continues his push to help kids
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Ever since former Mizzou football coach Gary Pinkel retired from coaching in 2015, he's made it his life's work to help other people.
On Monday, Pinkel hosted his seventh-annual Par 3 Golf Tournament at the Old Hawthorne. Year-after-year the event is one of his foundation's most successful fundraisers. While it does raise money for his foundation, G.P. Made, it also informs everyone in attendance of his ultimate goal: to help kids.
"It's really working well for our foundation," he said. "We want to give them a great time here and also learn about what we do to help kids."
You can watch ABC 17 Sports Director Nathalie Jones' full conversation with the former Mizzou head coach in the video player below.
While Coach Pinkel was still at the helm of Tiger football in 2015, he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He has said that his diagnosis was a wake-up call for him to spend more time with family and friends, while also using the platform he built to help children.
His non-profit organization works to support Missouri kids with three pillars that are close to his heart:
- Battling Cancer
- Breaking Disability Barriers
- Overcoming Social Economic Challenges
"My brother and sister were in a wheelchair when they were in adolescence, so I'm sensitive to that. We're looking to help kids that are in that situation and also kids that battle cancer...That's something that we can certainly help out with, with financials and other things," Pinkel said. "What we also do is we understand that it's completely different where my players grow up. One thing that we do with our players, when they come in, is we try to explain to other players on that team that this is the environment that they were in. We try to be understanding there, but we also know we can help these young men to be better as they go and have families and such. You know, you talk about winning football games, but it's also all these other things we do in our foundation to help kids. It's been very productive."
The support for Pinkel's foundation reaches far and wide. Through seven years of golf tournaments, lots of former players and coaches have graced the course at the Old Hawthorne, all in support of their former leader. On Monday, former Tiger special teams coordinator and current Kansas City Chiefs special teams assistant Andy Hill came out to hit the links, as well as former players Jeremy Maclin, Chase Coffman, Sean Weatherspoon and others.
Even in year seven, Coach Pinkel said that support never gets old.
"When you win at the level that we did, there's a bond that I can't explain to you it," Pinkel said. "These guys won a lot of games, a lot of bowl games, ended up in the Top-10 several times and they're so tight and close because that's what great football teams do. It's great to see again."
Pinkel said running this foundation is a lot like football in the sense that you always want to grow and get better.
"You beat somebody in the Cotton Bowl and you wake up the next morning, it's who are we gonna play next year? That's the way the foundation is. You wake up every day and I got a lot of good people around me. I think that's probably the most important thing to say is that I've got a lot of people around me that help us. Not only some of the players here in the past, we have a bunch of them here too, but at the end of the day a lot of people on my board - and we all work together, pull on the rope together - are all continually trying to make ourselves better," he said.
