It's been nearly a year and a half since the deadliest tornado outbreak in our region, and Ringgold's almost back to life as usual.
Larry Morris is the president of the Ringgold Quaterbacks Club. He explained, "As you can imagine the devastation was terrible after that tornado. And we had a lot of rebuilding to do."
The football field and baseball diamonds were destroyed by the twister. So Ringgold pulled together and rallied around Ringgold High. Morris added, "Recovery takes a long time. When we initially got started we thought well this will be over with pretty quick. We'll get this back to normal. But there was so much devastation and so much need out there that we just had to continue to try to replenish what was lost."
Ringgold High School Athletic Director Robert Akins said, "We still have some work to do. You know, there are always gaps in the insurance and things that you forget about as a coach and an athletic director, administratively. You know there are just some gaps that we need to improve on and things we just didn't anticipate and so we're doing some fundraising."
Now it's time to bring out the big guns. A brand new 2013 Corvette. Coach Akins added, "We thought that a big ticket item like that would draw a lot of interest from the local area and even up nationally because we've got it on the website."
The winner not only gets to drive off in the new set of wheels, but gets $15,000 cash to pay the taxes on it. But really, it's all about the kids.
"Coming back here our kids were really excited to be on this field and are excited to practice on it every day. I think they take a lot of pride in what we have now that we didn't have before necessarily. So there are some silver linings to this," Akins said.
Only 3,000 tickets will be sold for the raffle in November.
A ticket will cost you $100.
You can pick them up at several locations around town.
Or you can buy them online
here.
