Last month, 86 teams made up of firefighters, police officers, and military personnel gathered at the New England Sports Center in Marlborough MA for the 2021 BFit Heroes Cup hockey tournament.
According to Hero's Cup Foundation founder Mike Matros, the event was extremely successful although quite challenging due to many last minute changes and planning.
Mike also only had about 1/8 of the staff they normally had during the first 3 years. In fact, the entire weekend event was pulled off with 12 core volunteers (normally they have 50-80 volunteers.)
Plus the team count was down due to international travel restrictions -- there was going to be 110 teams, but this year had 86 teams.
Over $600,000 was raised for charities, plus organizers were able to raise $150,000 for the family of a Worcester police officer who died while trying to rescue a drowning teenager. WPD Officer Manny Familia was laid to rest the day before the tournament.
Matros said the teams played 190 hockey games, had over 7,000 spectators, 2870 registered players, and 7 bands played throughout the weekend.
USFRA partner Jägermeister was a Platinum Sponsor of the Heroes Cup event and had planned to serve shots throughout the weekend (which is fitting since Jägermeister is the Official Shot of the NHL), plus they had an amazing banner made (below), however there was some confusion about the venue with organizers so unfortunately it didn't happen.
But even though Jägermeister and USFRA were not able to attend, we were with all of the first responder and military athletes and organizers in spirit (pun intended), and we shared lots of photos and videos on social media and here on USFRA.org during the mid-June event.
We look forward to the 2022 Heroes Cup ... and hopefully Mike's team will be able to have 2 tournaments -- one in MA and one in FL -- but we'll see.
Please join us in congratulating all the teams for their hard work both on the ice and for raising funds for each team’s charity of choice. Below are some scenes of the June 11-13, 2021 event from Heroes Cup Foundation's facebook page...
