Foodball, Food Bowl, Foodbowl fundraisers have become an annual tradition throughout Grays Harbor County

Published 1:30 am Monday, December 22, 2025

UPDATED Thanksgiving football has been a tradition since 1934, and the Detroit Lions continue to host a traditional game to this day. Many families hold backyard Turkey Bowls and some communities host Turkey Trot fun runs. In 1973, Hoquiam and Aberdeen high schools played in their last Thanksgiving day clash on the gridiron. Due to changes in the Washington state high school playoff schedule, the annual Myrtle Street Thanksgiving day contest was cannibalized. The football game has evolved into a competition of a different sort — Foodball. And it’s not just a Thanksgiving contest; it reverberates throughout Grays Harbor during the holiday season. It has migrated east and west and has become an event that benefits hundreds, if not thousands of people in the region.

This year, Aberdeen and Hoquiam took part in the 45th Annual Foodbowl and other schools throughout Grays Harbor County have their own versions of this annual food and money collection for those in need. Events started in early November and included parades, restaurant takeovers, sporting events and game night.

Hoquiam High School graduate and current science teacher Terry Helland oversaw Foodball for HHS. “It was a great year indeed, and as always it was fun to witness high school students from both sides of Myrtle Street work together for a common cause that is so essential to the health and wellbeing of our towns.”

Aberdeen High School posted to Facebook, “A huge shout out to the students behind the scenes who spent the week, and the months leading up to it, putting it all together. Special thanks to everyone who donated, participated, spectated, or even shared a post online! It takes a village, and our village is pretty special!”

Aberdeen and Hoquiam’s combined efforts collecting food and cash resulted in a donation of the equivalent of more than 1 million pounds of food to local food banks.

In Ocean Shores, North Beach High School collected donations at basketball games at Larry Moore’s House of Pain. The school offered free admission to the games in exchange for a donation. Approximately 650 cans of food and $1,050 were donated.

For their Food Bowl this year, which ran from Nov. 17–25, Elma and McCleary School Districts partnered and collectively raised over $31,000 and 7,500 pounds of food donations for the Elma, Malone, and McCleary food banks.

“We were hoping for $25,000 this year since it’s 2025, and we were absolutely blown out of the water with support from our community and all of our students,” said Peyton Crisp, who is the food bowl coordinator and ASB advisor, and also the worksite coordinator and leadership and marketing teacher for Elma High School. “And then we hit $31,000, which was record-breaking. I think the highest number we’ve had before this was $24,000.”

Students could sign up for one of 210 volunteer spots, such as working the boot drive, collecting donations at the grocery stores or the Christmas Bazaar, and all those spots were filled within 25 minutes.

Bill Wilson, the president of the McCleary Food Bank, said that the annual food bowl, along with the McCleary Firefighters food drive, are the two food drives that support the McCleary Food Bank.

“The amount of food that we’ve seen coming from Elma High School has steadily risen,” Wilson said. “Matter of fact this year, we had right at 2,200 pounds of food coming our way. And that’s a pretty good amount of food when you start looking at individual cans and boxes of food.”

The cash donations enable the food bank to purchase items, such as milk, eggs, bread and potatoes, that aren’t provided by their food supplier; these items are purchased from Gordon’s Select Market.

“It’s not only buying local, but it’s also buying timely,” said Wilson. “Because we can’t store that type of food very easy with the amount of space in our freezers and coolers that we have. So it’s easily picked up on the morning of our distribution day and then we bring it right over for the food bank to distribute.”

And it’s not just the food bank volunteers who helped distribute the food bowl donations. For the past two years, Kelsi Brown, who is the middle school science teacher and runs the Leadership class, brings 10-12 kids on the 2nd and 4th Mondays when the food bank is open to assist in distribution.

“The kids just add a different dynamic,” Wilson said. “Everyone usually has a big smile on their face when the kids are around.”

Oakville High School held a food drive that collected 310 pounds of food and 61 toiletry items, which will be donated to the Oakville Food Bank.

Montesano’s Food Bowl ran from Dec. 5–15 and collected $30,814 in money and the equivalent of $4,990 in food donations.

“We are very impressed with what our community was able to do and our students were able to do, knowing the state of our economy in Washington and especially Grays Harbor, that they were still able to be so successful was just incredible,” said Heather Bruland, the ASB bookkeeper; Bruland assisted Kellie Dalan, the ASB advisor/CTE, with the food bowl.

Food bowl activities included candy cane grams, Simpson penny wars, student stoplight (with each grade taking a different afternoon), and high school glow party.

During the Montesano City Council meeting held on Dec. 9, several of the council members commented on seeing the students out collecting donations.

“This county as a whole, to see the way they come together and support the area food banks is really inspiring this year it’s more necessary than ever. … To see kids out there standing in the rain, collecting dollars and cents from people is truly inspiring,” said Ian Cope, a council member whose term ended this year.

On Dec. 14, the food was delivered to the Montesano Food Bank, and the students assisted with sorting the food items. Doug Iverson, director of the Montesano Food Bank, said that because of the cash donations, “we don’t have to spend time fundraising,” adding that the “main thing is the monetary, to get the money to buy more [because] your dollar goes further.”

This year, the Montesano Food Bank has seen the need increase.

“A year ago we were averaging about 30 families a week and now we’re averaging 60,” Iverson said.

For the first distribution day in November, 95 families queued up to receive a food basket.

Although the food bowl is the most visible time when the community donates, Iversen said that people drop off food year-round at the food bank.

“The generosity of this community, it just blows your mind,” he said.