 On October 4th, the Ambassador's, Harlem Ambassador's show basketball team is going to be in Sheboygan helping the early bird rotary with the fundraiser. Joining me from the early birds is J.J. Burkhart and Steve Rawlsie. Guys, tell me a little bit about what the early birds are all about. Well, the early bird rotary is one club that is part of Rotary International. That's a worldwide service organization whose motto was service above self. And in Sheboygan County we have several clubs and this early bird club that I'm proud to be a member of along with J.J. meets Thursday mornings and we have a foundation which we do various fundraisers for to provide money into a scholarship fund, Sheboygan County Food Bank, international projects, and other county-wide needs. J.J. can fill us in on the scope of these scholarships. Well, J.J., before we get into that scope, tell us a little bit about how often you meet, when do you meet, where do you meet, how could somebody else possibly get involved in this? Definitely. We meet Thursday mornings at 645 at Allen Alls on 12th Street. And if you just contact a Rotary member, you can come as a guest, check it out, and see if it's something that you'd want to be a part of. We'd love to have you. And there are other Rotary clubs. I don't want to steal any thunder from them in Sheboygan as well that meet at other times. But which is great. Believe it or not, I was going through a high school annual the other night and I was looking under my name what I was involved in. One of the things was Rotary because they used to invite high school students to the meetings. Is any of that part of your scope? There actually is what's called Rotar Act, which is a high school, more of a youth version of Rotary and they're affiliated, but they meet at their own times and do their own projects and things like that. But we do collaborate. Now, I had mentioned at the beginning that this has to do with the fundraising event, the Harlem Ambassadors. What is the fundraising for? Basically what we're trying to do is raise some money for our scholarship fund with this event in particular. Is there any special target for the scholarship? Our goal is $4,500, which we give out $1,500 scholarships, so that would be three scholarships. And they're for Technical College, which is important to note that because they are specifically for students attending Technical College. So we think that's important for kids to have real-life work skills when they're coming out of high school. Have that to look forward to that they can actually get a job and start contributing to society. The Harlems began in 1997, and I believe it was in 1998. That's when they developed the concept and they had their first training camp in 1998 and they've been in existence ever since. Matter of fact, I think I read we're in 2002, they spun off a second group, so they got two groups out there helping local communities and they've been all over the country, literally all 50 states and overseas helping with the troops, that kind of thing. But getting on to our local side of it, where did the idea of getting the Harlem Ambassadors come from and how did you contact them, all that kind of business? Actually UW is your boy's own Tom Pineski, actually. He had gotten an email and I don't know from where, but he forwarded it to me and said, do you think this is something that would be good for our club? And I'm crazy about basketball. You can ask my wife, I'm borderline obsessive about it. I watch almost every Bucks game and college basketball and everything like that. I play basketball a couple times a week and right away I said, sure, yeah. And before you know it, I'm calling these folks and getting the team together and getting fellow club members involved and here we are about a week away from the event and just kind of putting the finishing touches on it. I also mentioned at the beginning on October 4th, this was going to be, why don't you get into a little of the specifics, we know it's on the 4th, what time is it going to be, where is it going to be, those kinds of things. Steve, you want to appeal that one? It's at 6.30 p.m. in the Sheboygan Self High Acuity Fieldhouse. You got to get that acuity in there. Absolutely. They are great benefactors in this county area. They are. Yes, they are. And we will have concessions beforehand so families can show up for brats, burgers, hot dogs, popcorn, chips that will also be part of and supplied by Festival Foods who has become a fantastic supporter of our club and our fundraising efforts since coming to town this year. I know that I work with the Sheboygan Public Education Foundation and they helped us with our fundraiser in the spring with the diploma run that we had. So Festival is a very, they've gotten very involved in the community. The ambassadors are not going to just play the basketball game at night. They are also involved in something else earlier in the day. What would that be? At Farnsworth Middle School at 10 in the morning, we're going to have a program that they do for schools and they aim it towards elementary and middle school students and their message is stay in school and stay off of drugs. And so we're excited and very anticipatory on what this message is going to be and how it's going to come off at Farnsworth Middle School. Now we got to talk about the local heroes that are going to be involved in this game and the way it sounded from their website and that they might be in for a real experience playing these outstanding basketball players, the Harlem ambassadors. Who are some of the members of the squad? If you can't remember, I've got your list right here. Okay, he's got the roster. Let me just take a look at that. I mean, off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure I'm playing. I'm definitely not a hero or a basketball star but I'm going to go out there and have some fun with it. I want to say one of our partners, our key sponsor of this event is Sargento out of Plymouth. They've been on board in a huge backer of what we're trying to do. And Mark Ryan, Chief Operating Officer of Sargento is going to be playing Michael Pellegrino of Sargento. Kayla Groh, former UWGP player. There is a name a lot of people might be familiar with if you're a basketball fan. She was an outstanding player at UWGP. Yep, holds the all-time scoring record for Elkhart Lake High School girls basketball. Um, UW-Shaborgan Athletic Director. You know, if I were you, I wouldn't let Kayla on the floor too much. No one else might see the ball. Well, I'm going to tell you he said that, but no. Just kidding. I'm not sure how to pronounce Missy's last name, the UW-Shaborgan Athletic Director. Gerski. Yes, what he said. I'm glad to have her involved. State Senator Joe Liebham is on the team. Dr. Darmish Murthy from Aurora. Shaborgan's own J.J. Montgomery. Chuck and Trina Van Horn out of Plymouth and high school basketball coach and teacher, Jason Duff from Plymouth. So that's just... Now, if there's anybody out there watching and they want to get involved in terms of being a local hero, is it too late? No, we do have a couple roster spots available. So we're actually... We could hold up to 20 players. So yeah, please contact me. One more thing. And we know it's a show basketball team and they're going to want to make it entertaining for the fans. What correspondence have they shared with you about what to expect if they talked about any of that yet or is that something you think will happen the day of the game? It's a three-game meeting about 45 minutes before the game. So I think that's going to be kind of my first indication. I've seen some video clips and I think I brought some along today. So I've seen what they do. It's kind of comedy basketball in the vein of the Globetrotters. We're all familiar with them. So it's kind of like that. But they have some tricks that they do and then there's just some regular basketball going on. So the local guys are going to be the Washington Generals basically. One more thing before we sign off, JJ, actually, too. Tell us a little bit about who some of the other sponsors are and then about tickets, how can fans get tickets in advance? Thanks for asking that. Blue Harbor has been great. They've put up the Harlem Ambassadors for the night. Many thanks to them. Briscoe County Grill, Superior Chemical, Burkhart Ford, Van Horn, Burkhart Insurance, Four Square Home Inspections, Ed Morgan accounting, Josh Schmidt Construction, and Reinbold Novak Funeral Home, as well as Aurora. So many thanks to them. Tickets are available at Festival Foods. Another one of our partners. They're going to be providing the food, as Steve said, but tickets are available now at Festival Foods or at the door. All right, good. Thanks a lot for stopping in. Good luck with your program for JJ and Steve. I'm Mike Martin saying thanks for watching everybody and we'll see you down the road.