Manhattan residents braved the rain Saturday to take the plunge for Special Olympics Kansas.<\/p>\n
Event coordinator Katelyn Andrist said the Polar Plunge is one of the organization\u2019s biggest fundraisers of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for people, it is very overwhelming, but you\u2019re jumping in for our athletes,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re showing them that at the end of the day, we can all be comfortable or uncomfortable together. It\u2019s breaking the ice, literally, of inclusion, of trying to come together and find something that really allows us to just bridge that gap and build community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coming into this weekend, Andrist said the Manhattan event had a fundraising goal of $18,000. By Saturday, it raised more than $25,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just very happy and just so grateful that the community shows up for our athletes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Proceeds will benefit Special Olympic athletes across Kansas, through shared revenues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have local teams throughout the state, but we help all the teams,\u201d Andrist said. \u201cThe two local teams within Manhattan have fundraised and they will actually get a percentage back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the participants were the Twin Valley Tornadoes team of plungers. Coach Ruthie Kurtz-Bosley explained the purpose of the event is to build community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means inclusion, it means like participating, it means just being involved,\u201d Kurtz-Bosley said.<\/p>\n
She said donations continue to trickle in and more Polar Plunges are planned across the region this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manhattan residents braved the rain Saturday to take the plunge for Special Olympics Kansas. Event coordinator Katelyn Andrist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[610,75,84,83,9,24,12,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-135415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-local","9":"tag-manhattan","10":"tag-manhattan-headlines","11":"tag-manhattan-news","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}