RIPPLE/Lindsay Craven

The Boonville Rec Club will host its first Football Festival on August 3 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. The event will feature live music, food and craft vendors, bounce houses, a cruise-in and ceremony performed by the local VFW. All proceeds from the event will go to the football program developed by the rec club.

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Boonville will experience its first Football Festival on August 3.

Boonville Football Festival will be at Boonville Elementary School at from 5 to 10 p.m. The event is being held to raise money for the Boonville Rec Club’s newly formed football program.

“Yadkin County is starting a new football league called the Mountain Valley Youth Athletic Conference, and we’re having to buy all new football equipment,” said Shannon Steelman, Boonville Rec Club’s Football Director. “We’re having to raise money for the equipment for youth football at Boonville.”

Steelman said that the club decided to create its own football program after seeing the way other programs were run in the county.

“We decided we needed to get out of the program that we were in and create our own so that we could control where the kids’ monies go,” Steelman said. “Instead of a committee of one there will be a committee of each director of each school’s football team and we all make the rules and follow them the way they are written.”

The program will feature three different groups. The freshman group will be for children in kindergarten through second grade, junior varsity will be for children in third through fourth grade, and varsity will be for children in fifth and sixth grade. Each team has space for 20 to 25 children.

“We’ve got 50 signed up so far this year for all three groups,” Steelman said. “They will start playing this fall and the first game is tentatively set for August 25.”

Steelman came up with the idea for the Football Festival while the club was brainstorming fundraising ideas.

“This is something that we thought might go over well since the Heritage Day Festival isn’t in Boonville anymore,” Steelman said. “We thought maybe we could do something like this and people would enjoy it.”

Steelman said that the event will feature live music from Dusty York and Risky Business. The local VFW will host the opening ceremony. There will be bounce houses for children, and more than 20 vendors will be in attendance. The Yadkin Valley Cruisers will be hosting a cruise-in during the event as well.

The Boonville Rec Club will be selling hamburgers, hotdogs, cotton candy and popcorn.

All proceeds from the festival will go toward buying equipment for the football program.

“We really don’t have a goal for the festival,” Steelman said. “I know the equipment is going to run us somewhere close to $10,000 and I doubt this raises that much but it will be a good start.”

Steelman said that the Boonville Rec Club will continue to raise funds through the remainder of the year by selling t-shirts and hosting giveaways. He says that the program still has space for more children and they will continue signing children up. Anyone interested should contact the Boonville Rec Club.

Steelman says that he encourages the community to come out and support their children and the football program.

“Come out and support our local kids so that we can keep them in safe equipment and they can enjoy the sport of football,” Steelman said. “It’s for the kids and their safety so that we can have a well-rounded program for Yadkin County.”

The rain date for this event is August 4.

Reach Lindsay Craven at 679-2341 or at lcraven@heartlandpublications.com.