What began as a tribute to a beloved father has grown into one of the Sault’s most impactful fundraisers – this year\u2019s Andy Buffone Memorial Golf Tournament surpassed its of generating vital funds for suicide prevention<\/p>\n
Approximately 130 local golfers took to the links at the Sault Ste. Marie Golf Club for an important cause Saturday.<\/p>\n
The club hosted the fifth annual Andy Buffone Memorial Golf Tournament to raise funds for Canadian Mental Health Association Algoma programming.<\/p>\n
The inaugural tournament took place in 2021, organized by the Sault\u2019s Anthony Buffone in memory of his father Andy.<\/p>\n
Andy died by suicide in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad took his own life and we wanted to bring more awareness of mental health to our community. This tournament is a good opportunity for us to raise that awareness and help CMHA Algoma by raising as much money as possible,\u201d Anthony told SooToday.<\/p>\n
Funds raised by those registering to enter the annual tournament, sponsors and individual donors go to CMHA programming such as Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST).<\/p>\n
ASIST is designed to help healthcare workers, social workers, teachers, counsellors, police, community volunteers and others recognize the risk of suicide and learn how to intervene to prevent suicidal thoughts from becoming suicidal behaviours.<\/p>\n
Approximately $75,000 was raised over the course of the tournament\u2019s first four years and Anthony said he was confident the $100,000 mark would be reached this year.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of Saturday\u2019s tournament, $42,000 had been raised this year, bringing the total amount of funds raised over the past five years to $117,000.<\/p>\n
A silent auction, designed to generate even more funds, was scheduled for later Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the past five years $100,000 has been the goal. I’m definitely very grateful for sure. If it wasn’t for our great committee this would never have happened. We have CMHA members on the committee. It’s really great to have their support. They really helped us on the financial side to keep everything organized,\u201d Anthony said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never thought that we would get to this amount. We’ve grown the tournament over the past few years to kind of step it up each year and we’ve got some really great sponsors on board with us,\u201d Anthony said.<\/p>\n
The Shoe Fits, for example, donated golf shoes to each participant in Saturday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we’re going to keep going. We’re going to see how this year goes and maybe potentially grow it into not only a golf tournament, but also a foundation too,\u201d Anthony said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s really important for me and my family to see that there’s support out there for people and there are some intervention methods. The CMHA is doing what they can to help people who are struggling with their mental health and intervene in an escalated situation where someone’s looking to take their life away. We just don’t want that to happen so we want them to have these tool kits that they can provide to the community,\u201d Anthony said.<\/p>\n
Those who played in Saturday\u2019s\u00a0tournament were pleased to golf with friends while keeping the serious nature of mental health and suicide prevention in mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s been wonderful to play today and obviously for a wonderful cause, the Canadian Mental Health Association. The committee of volunteers is just tireless and we definitely have something special here. It’s nice for friends to come together to\u00a0benefit the very worthy cause of mental health,\u201d said Paul Casola, a tournament participant and Buffone family friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a wonderful cause and it\u2019s great to see people participate in this event in order to advance the cause of mental health and the awareness of suicide intervention,\u201d said Dan Morgan, a retired CMHA Algoma employee.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everybody can relate and has some stake in this game today, for what this is about. We’re just looking to get out, do our best and help raise awareness and support the community,\u201d said Sarah Birkenhauer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m excited to be a part of this,\u201d said Alexa Alban of Detroit, visiting friends in the Sault.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think mental health is something that’s really important to spread awareness about. It\u2019s a great cause and it’s exciting to see all these people come together for it,\u201d Alban said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s important to always bring attention to these issues that people are facing and a lot of times facing them silently. So to bring it into the light and raise money to have supports there for people is super important,\u201d said Andrew Ross, a CMHA Algoma employee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What began as a tribute to a beloved father has grown into one of the Sault’s most impactful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,54074,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-92046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-columnspursuitandy-buffone-memorial-golf-tournament","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}