It’s Scott here at Ben Kruse 18 Fore Life Foundation. Hope you have time to hear a re-cap from this year’s event! We had a wonderful time celebrating, giving and remembering on June 5-6! Thank you for supporting 18 FORE Life.
Sincerely, Scott Kruse
Transcript: Hey, everybody, it’s Scott here with 18 FORE Life. Just wanted to send out a recap of our event. It’s been a little bit almost a month down the road, so we’ve had plenty of time to recover and and kind of regroup and let everything soak in. It’s just all been good. All the feedback, all the all the posts on social media. We’re really proud of everything that went on over June 4th and fifth weekend. Actually, it was fifth and sixth weekend, next year’s June 4th and fifth. So mark your calendars and make sure you can join us. We’ve got some cool ideas already in the works, and so we’re really, really excited about that. I want to recap on June 5th, you know, we rent the Elks out. The Elks are just such great people. They serve great food. We have a great dinner, and we packed the house. The evening started out. My wife got to welcome everybody. Got to thank all of the the helpers, the the people that volunteer, the people that had all their jobs that, that we all do to, to to get this thing rolling. And boy, you feel that room up and you can, you know, just immediately start seeing and feeling the great, great atmosphere and environment at the Elks. And my, my cousin Darren kicked the whole thing off with a great invocation, you know, and again, we just feel like that’s necessary. We feel like God. We feel like there’s a bunch of people up there that are are almost having their own 18 FORE Life that weekend. We know and we feel that we are blessed that weekend. And Darren did a great job giving thanks. I got to say some comments, you know, and talk about the fundraisers that went on throughout the year. We’ve got all these different fundraisers, big and small, and they all add up to and help out the cause. I got to thank the sponsors who help us put on such a nice event. And throughout the year, our sponsors are families and businesses, and they’re pulled in a lot of directions. They’ve got a lot of choices, make a lot of them support everything that they’re asked to support. But we just thank them for choosing 18 FORE Life and saying yes to us and again, helping us at all the different levels to put on such a nice event. The golfers, again, they’re the heartbeat of what we do, 92 teams of four. I’ll talk about that in a second. And and again, all the volunteers, just all the helpers, all the workers, all the people that that help pull this off. So that’s special. I also got to talk about us being a community. You know, we don’t we we’re kind of getting more bold and how we talk about 18 FORE Life because we’re different. You know, we’re a community. We’re kind of a family. We’re kind of all on the same team. Our placement this year had every community listed out where we sent out a love offering, 37 states, obviously, our local towns, you could see how many have went to our local area towns that we all know if we’re from around here. But then you start seeing the outliers and you start seeing, okay, you know, we’ve got some connections, or maybe it’s just someone’s uncle that lives in New Mexico or out on the East Coast. And they came to us and said, I bet you can’t help them. But I said, yeah, we can, because this is what we do. All you need is a connection to this. We’re different. We’re not the same. Another way we’re different is, is we we allow this love offering to go to families and they get to use it how they need to use it. They don’t have to use it as a gas card. Some little gas card where okay, we can help you, but this is the only way we can help. You know, we we let them decide. It may be rent, it may be a house payment. It may be a car payment. It may be gas to get to the treatments once a week. It may be just to keep the lights on because someone’s having to take off work to be a caregiver. We let them choose. They know we’ve even had people say, you know what, I’m going to take a trip and it’s terminal, and I’m going to make my last memories. And this is thanks to you all. So we are different. We’re bold in that. We’re getting more bold in that. And and hopefully it will help us raise more money because it doesn’t seem like cancer is going anywhere. And meanwhile our fundraising kind of is the same each year. We’re pretty consistent with that, and hopefully we’ll find ways to kind of bump up and people can say, hey, you know, 18 FORE Life’s different. And they help people directly. They help people how they need it. And so I kind of got to talk about that. Our annual video was amazing. David Robinson did an incredible job. Please go to 18 FORE Life and see his work. You can even go back and see his archive videos, but watch this year’s video if you want a place to see my brother kind of come alive. You know, his golf swing is our logo. Someone took a picture of that. Well, David took AI and helped him swing in real time. And unlike me, my brother had almost a flawless golf swing. So the AI swing looks just like his old swing. And it really was special for us and anyone, all of his friends, anyone that knew him, and maybe even people that don’t know him didn’t have a chance to. It’s really cool to watch him move and come to life. Kelly owns an incredible, absolutely incredible speaker, incredible story. Her faith, her walk with God through her diagnosis, her her strength and against. She would say all of it came from God. But the emotions of of finding this diagnosis out and having to tell people and talk about it, you know, that you can tell that’s not easy. So I would say anyone that’s battled cancer that, that, that listened to her or has listened to her tell her story. I know you can relate to every emotion, every word. People like me who haven’t went through the fight. And again, I almost want to say yet we draw strength from that. I always tell people, you’re inspiring everyone that you know and I mean it. We look to you, we look to people like Kelly that set that example, and we hope that we can have even an ounce of what you all have as you fight being a hero, setting the example for your family and friends. And it’s just what you all do. And I don’t even know that you know you’re doing it, but you’re doing it. And so again, we thank Kelly for saying yes and sharing that testimony and, and that that walk of faith and that story. And, and it was very special. Chris Berman, if I had to just sum up, I would just one. I always tell people he just seems to be one of us, very humble, very humble human being. But first class in every way, so kind, so generous with this time, so generous with the donation that he made to the charity that he probably wouldn’t want me to tell you about, but, it just struck me as as as something that that man didn’t have to do, but he felt called to do it. And again, I think it’s just proof that he’s just a beautiful, beautiful human being. And and we just thank him for saying yes. We thank him for sharing his stories. If you grew up around sports at all, if you’ve ever turned on ESPN, he’s going to be the first 50 year employee and the only 50 year employee at ESPN. And when you hear that voice, it’s special. I said, we’ve had a lot of legends come speak, and they’ve all had legendary stories. They’ve all been legendary in the way that they entertained and motivated and inspired us. But this was an icon. It was a true icon, and I really feel that way, and it was real special to have him come. Ladon Rogers accompanied him. She’s a relative of my family, so it was special for my family to be reconnected with a family member, a distant cousin, and kind of a not so distant cousin. And again, just to just to have more special added into that room that night. It was really cool. Saturday’s golf, the weather was absolutely perfect. Ideal. It was. It was one to remember. It was flawless. We had 92 teams of four. That’s a lot of golfers. That’s a lot of people. Couple that with 460, 470 people at the banquet. That’s just a lot of people. And when you walk away from that weekend just going, man, it was just a bunch of good people that got together. That’s why we did this, you know, doing something good, helping others. That was always in the back of our mind. But we wanted to bring people together. That was the first thing on the list. We wanted to bring people together. And man, you saw people that only see each other one time a year. I see so many friends and people that I would say I’m close friends with, but I only see them one time a year. I only get that one hug and that one, hey, how are you doing? And catch up real fast. But you see people reuniting with classmates and and developing new friendships and relationships. It’s real special. And so that was just a great, great day of golf. Our winners were Tyler and Chance and Ryan Holden and Brant Pearson. They shot a 15 under again. The golf’s almost secondary. But we like knowing that there are teams out there that are really good at golf. And and they they they proved that they got the not so famous tan jackets this year. Lastly, I just want to thank again all of the people that support this cause. And we we just thank you. If you wear a cap, wear a shirt, talk about us. Send us a name or an address of someone fighting cancer. Help out in any way. We just want to thank you. Our number is in. You know, again, we’re being real consistent with how we can help. We’re at $257,000 in love offerings this year alone. Obviously, in my mind, the goal is to break 300,000. That’s just going to be the goal. And believe me, the cancer is out there. So it’s just a matter of of what type of money we can raise here in these this second half of this year. $4,577,000 is what we sent out to date. Again, we’re pushing 4 or 5 million. As long as cancer is not going to go away. And as long as we hear there’s not a cure yet, we’re going to help out and we’re going to help people out as they see fit, as they need it with $1,000 love offering. So again, listen, we thank you. We hope you have a real safe and happy 4th of July this weekend. Happy Birthday America 250. We are so blessed to be in this great country. And again, we thank you for enjoying your freedom and having a safe weekend and for always supporting 18 FORE Life. Thank you so much. Thank you for watching.
Video – 2026 Golf Event Recap
Posted: July 2, 2026 by 18 FORE Life
It’s Scott here at Ben Kruse 18 Fore Life Foundation. Hope you have time to hear a re-cap from this year’s event! We had a wonderful time celebrating, giving and remembering on June 5-6! Thank you for supporting 18 FORE Life.
Sincerely,
Scott Kruse
Transcript:
Hey, everybody, it’s Scott here with 18 FORE Life. Just wanted to send out a recap of our event. It’s been a little bit almost a month down the road, so we’ve had plenty of time to recover and and kind of regroup and let everything soak in. It’s just all been good. All the feedback, all the all the posts on social media. We’re really proud of everything that went on over June 4th and fifth weekend. Actually, it was fifth and sixth weekend, next year’s June 4th and fifth. So mark your calendars and make sure you can join us. We’ve got some cool ideas already in the works, and so we’re really, really excited about that. I want to recap on June 5th, you know, we rent the Elks out. The Elks are just such great people. They serve great food. We have a great dinner, and we packed the house. The evening started out. My wife got to welcome everybody. Got to thank all of the the helpers, the the people that volunteer, the people that had all their jobs that, that we all do to, to to get this thing rolling. And boy, you feel that room up and you can, you know, just immediately start seeing and feeling the great, great atmosphere and environment at the Elks. And my, my cousin Darren kicked the whole thing off with a great invocation, you know, and again, we just feel like that’s necessary. We feel like God. We feel like there’s a bunch of people up there that are are almost having their own 18 FORE Life that weekend. We know and we feel that we are blessed that weekend. And Darren did a great job giving thanks. I got to say some comments, you know, and talk about the fundraisers that went on throughout the year. We’ve got all these different fundraisers, big and small, and they all add up to and help out the cause. I got to thank the sponsors who help us put on such a nice event. And throughout the year, our sponsors are families and businesses, and they’re pulled in a lot of directions. They’ve got a lot of choices, make a lot of them support everything that they’re asked to support. But we just thank them for choosing 18 FORE Life and saying yes to us and again, helping us at all the different levels to put on such a nice event. The golfers, again, they’re the heartbeat of what we do, 92 teams of four. I’ll talk about that in a second. And and again, all the volunteers, just all the helpers, all the workers, all the people that that help pull this off. So that’s special. I also got to talk about us being a community. You know, we don’t we we’re kind of getting more bold and how we talk about 18 FORE Life because we’re different. You know, we’re a community. We’re kind of a family. We’re kind of all on the same team. Our placement this year had every community listed out where we sent out a love offering, 37 states, obviously, our local towns, you could see how many have went to our local area towns that we all know if we’re from around here. But then you start seeing the outliers and you start seeing, okay, you know, we’ve got some connections, or maybe it’s just someone’s uncle that lives in New Mexico or out on the East Coast. And they came to us and said, I bet you can’t help them. But I said, yeah, we can, because this is what we do. All you need is a connection to this. We’re different. We’re not the same. Another way we’re different is, is we we allow this love offering to go to families and they get to use it how they need to use it. They don’t have to use it as a gas card. Some little gas card where okay, we can help you, but this is the only way we can help. You know, we we let them decide. It may be rent, it may be a house payment. It may be a car payment. It may be gas to get to the treatments once a week. It may be just to keep the lights on because someone’s having to take off work to be a caregiver. We let them choose. They know we’ve even had people say, you know what, I’m going to take a trip and it’s terminal, and I’m going to make my last memories. And this is thanks to you all. So we are different. We’re bold in that. We’re getting more bold in that. And and hopefully it will help us raise more money because it doesn’t seem like cancer is going anywhere. And meanwhile our fundraising kind of is the same each year. We’re pretty consistent with that, and hopefully we’ll find ways to kind of bump up and people can say, hey, you know, 18 FORE Life’s different. And they help people directly. They help people how they need it. And so I kind of got to talk about that. Our annual video was amazing. David Robinson did an incredible job. Please go to 18 FORE Life and see his work. You can even go back and see his archive videos, but watch this year’s video if you want a place to see my brother kind of come alive. You know, his golf swing is our logo. Someone took a picture of that. Well, David took AI and helped him swing in real time. And unlike me, my brother had almost a flawless golf swing. So the AI swing looks just like his old swing. And it really was special for us and anyone, all of his friends, anyone that knew him, and maybe even people that don’t know him didn’t have a chance to. It’s really cool to watch him move and come to life. Kelly owns an incredible, absolutely incredible speaker, incredible story. Her faith, her walk with God through her diagnosis, her her strength and against. She would say all of it came from God. But the emotions of of finding this diagnosis out and having to tell people and talk about it, you know, that you can tell that’s not easy. So I would say anyone that’s battled cancer that, that, that listened to her or has listened to her tell her story. I know you can relate to every emotion, every word. People like me who haven’t went through the fight. And again, I almost want to say yet we draw strength from that. I always tell people, you’re inspiring everyone that you know and I mean it. We look to you, we look to people like Kelly that set that example, and we hope that we can have even an ounce of what you all have as you fight being a hero, setting the example for your family and friends. And it’s just what you all do. And I don’t even know that you know you’re doing it, but you’re doing it. And so again, we thank Kelly for saying yes and sharing that testimony and, and that that walk of faith and that story. And, and it was very special. Chris Berman, if I had to just sum up, I would just one. I always tell people he just seems to be one of us, very humble, very humble human being. But first class in every way, so kind, so generous with this time, so generous with the donation that he made to the charity that he probably wouldn’t want me to tell you about, but, it just struck me as as as something that that man didn’t have to do, but he felt called to do it. And again, I think it’s just proof that he’s just a beautiful, beautiful human being. And and we just thank him for saying yes. We thank him for sharing his stories. If you grew up around sports at all, if you’ve ever turned on ESPN, he’s going to be the first 50 year employee and the only 50 year employee at ESPN. And when you hear that voice, it’s special. I said, we’ve had a lot of legends come speak, and they’ve all had legendary stories. They’ve all been legendary in the way that they entertained and motivated and inspired us. But this was an icon. It was a true icon, and I really feel that way, and it was real special to have him come. Ladon Rogers accompanied him. She’s a relative of my family, so it was special for my family to be reconnected with a family member, a distant cousin, and kind of a not so distant cousin. And again, just to just to have more special added into that room that night. It was really cool. Saturday’s golf, the weather was absolutely perfect. Ideal. It was. It was one to remember. It was flawless. We had 92 teams of four. That’s a lot of golfers. That’s a lot of people. Couple that with 460, 470 people at the banquet. That’s just a lot of people. And when you walk away from that weekend just going, man, it was just a bunch of good people that got together. That’s why we did this, you know, doing something good, helping others. That was always in the back of our mind. But we wanted to bring people together. That was the first thing on the list. We wanted to bring people together. And man, you saw people that only see each other one time a year. I see so many friends and people that I would say I’m close friends with, but I only see them one time a year. I only get that one hug and that one, hey, how are you doing? And catch up real fast. But you see people reuniting with classmates and and developing new friendships and relationships. It’s real special. And so that was just a great, great day of golf. Our winners were Tyler and Chance and Ryan Holden and Brant Pearson. They shot a 15 under again. The golf’s almost secondary. But we like knowing that there are teams out there that are really good at golf. And and they they they proved that they got the not so famous tan jackets this year. Lastly, I just want to thank again all of the people that support this cause. And we we just thank you. If you wear a cap, wear a shirt, talk about us. Send us a name or an address of someone fighting cancer. Help out in any way. We just want to thank you. Our number is in. You know, again, we’re being real consistent with how we can help. We’re at $257,000 in love offerings this year alone. Obviously, in my mind, the goal is to break 300,000. That’s just going to be the goal. And believe me, the cancer is out there. So it’s just a matter of of what type of money we can raise here in these this second half of this year. $4,577,000 is what we sent out to date. Again, we’re pushing 4 or 5 million. As long as cancer is not going to go away. And as long as we hear there’s not a cure yet, we’re going to help out and we’re going to help people out as they see fit, as they need it with $1,000 love offering. So again, listen, we thank you. We hope you have a real safe and happy 4th of July this weekend. Happy Birthday America 250. We are so blessed to be in this great country. And again, we thank you for enjoying your freedom and having a safe weekend and for always supporting 18 FORE Life. Thank you so much. Thank you for watching.
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