The Big Daddy Duck Race 2018 included a raffle. The tickets were $5 and the prize was $1000 cash. The Rotary drew the winning ticket Sunday at noon. The winner has been called and everything is final. If you did not get a call, please know that we appreciate your support and hope you will support us in the future. Thanks again for a great duck race 2018.
Saturday June 9th, Rockford Rotary crowned three ducks decorated by local businesses as big winners in the 2018 Big Daddy Duck Race. The most popular duck was determined by online voting by the public from late May to June 8th. IPM won the most popular vote with over 1100 votes in this year's contest. They got a big lead early and just kept pouring on the votes. The prettiest duck award was determined by the voting public again. This time the method was slightly different. People at start of summer viewed the ducks at the Rotary booth and voted for their favorite duck with their hard earned money. We had a close race this year between the Bridge Street Burger Shack, Knape Industries and Rockford's Michael Depres. Depres had a duck covered with play money. Knape Industries pulled out all the stops with a gold plated duck that included a painting glove for a tail and several cool car emblems on it. Bill Knape of Knape Industries claimed the plating was fools gold. It turned out he was right because the Bridge Street Burger Shack won it all with a fantastic duck sporting a grill with burgers. The final prize was for the fastest duck. The water was high this year, and the river was running fast. The unofficial time on the course was under 10 minutes. That is over 2 minutes faster than the all time fastest race. The finish was very, very close. The Bridge Street Burger Shack almost made history with two awards in one year as it finished an extremely close second to Rockford Accounting's duck. The 'Shack duck was sneaky with its dual keel, but in the end the accounting duck was just plain faster.
Thank you everyone for participating in this year's contest. We really appreciate your support!
Look for our thank you on Facebook soon. We will post all the businesses logos as an additional thank you for their support.
Voting is done for the 2018 Duck Prize - Rockford's Most Popular Duck. The big winner is IPM . They were able to capture 1130 votes. Fatsos Pizza was second with 259. Farmer's Insurance was third with 217. Congratulations IPM! Thank you to all the businesses that participated in this year's Duck Prize.
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Rockford Rotary is proud to announce that it will be hosting a concert on Thursday June 21st (the Summer Solstice). The concert will feature Langhorne Slim & the Lost at Last Band and the The Accidentals wsg Roosevelt Digs.
The concert will be at St. Cecilia Music Center - Royce Auditorium in Grand Rapids. If you are interested in
purchasing tickets, you can do it securely online at the following site: https://m.bpt.me/event/3405139.
We support several local and international projects throughout the year.
STRIVE
Rockford Rotary sponsors and actively runs a program called STRIVE that pairs adult mentors with senior high school students. The students are identified by the schools as being in danger of not graduating. Many of them simply need more help and/or an involved adult to get them over the hump and keep them motivated. We award scholarships to the students for different things like highest GPA, most improvement, etc. It is a very rewarding experience for mentors and students alike.
The Big Daddy Duck Race
Rockford area businesses purchase ducks and decorate them for the race. We build a float each year and display the ducks in the parade. We also give out candy which is a lot of fun! The 10" ducks are on display in our booth at the Start of Summer Celebration in downtown Rockford. People vote for their favorite duck by placing coins or bills in the jar next to it. We count up the money and award a "prettiest duck" trophy to the winner. Saturday evening of the Start of Summer Celebration, we put the ducks in the water in front of the dam and race them to Richardson-Sowersby park. We award a trophy for the "fastest" duck. The money raised goes to local programs including sponsorship of the summer reading program at Hillview in Rockford.
Reading Rocks in Rockford
Reading Rocks in Rockford started as a Rotary event and we created the event to encourage literacy in our town. Recently, the Rockford Library has taken over the event and hosts it in early June. The goal is to get kids excited about reading and to keep them reading all summer. Authors of children books attend the event and interact with young readers. We help setup tents the event, and we staff the Hook-a-Book tent each year. At Hook-a-Book, young readers receive a free book just for throwing their fishing line into the "water" and reeling it back in. It is a very rewarding service experience for Rotarians.
Youth Exchange
Our club supports an inbound and outbound international exchange student - often yearly. Our current inbound student is from Brazil. We find host families and support the student any way that we can to enrich both the community's and the student's exchange experience.
Life Leadership Conference
Each year we sponsor 6 or 7 Rockford High School students to attend the Life Leadership Conference sponsored by the Rotary International District 6290. Students are chosen for their leadership potential and scholarship. Interviews take place in the spring of each year. To read more about the conference follow this LINK.
POLIO Plus
Rotary International's longtime goal has been to eliminate polio worldwide. We are in fact very close to doing that LINK. We support the district and international Rotary organization's effort in the fight against polio.
