Northwest Iowa golfers hitting the green for local families

LARCHWOOD, Iowa (KELO) — There’s going to be a big golf tournament this weekend at Grand Falls Casino and Resort.

Sixty-two teams have signed up to play, but most importantly they’re there to help raise money for two local families who can use their help.

A lot of people like to play golf, but this Friday and Saturday dozens of golfers will be teeing it up to raise money.

“There’s so many families out there we can benefit, anybody across the Sioux Falls area who are going through a hard time, but we select families who are in need, who have children at home, long stays at the hospital and away from work and different things like that we want to help out with,” Jakes Summer Classic founder Mark Jacobsen said.

Mark Jacobsen is the founder of Jake’s Summer Classic.

Jacobsen has held fundraisers like this for the past seven years.

This year, 100% of the proceeds will go to help Cat Clark and his wife Lindsey and one other family.

Lindsey was diagnosed with brain cancer 14 months ago, it’s non-curable and it’s progressively gotten worse.

“It’s been really hard on our family, just having two little girls and we’ve been together since we were in 7th grade,” Clark said.

Clark says Lindsey is the love of his life and to watch her go through what she’s been dealing with has been emotional and a struggle.

“A lot of trips to Rochester, she lived out there for six weeks doing treatment last fall and just got significantly worse after the radiation,” Clark said.

Clark says he’s grateful to the Jacobsen family and to the sponsors of the tournament who have come together to help out his family in a time of need.

“There are a lot of different families out there who could use the medical funds in this region and this area to be one of the two selected it means the world to us; the medical bills keep coming in and medications so you can only cover so much,” Clark said. “I look at my five and three-year-old daughters and I think about what their futures going to be like it’s really hard.”

The tournament is already filled with 250 players, but you can still help out by donating or bidding on numerous items in a silent auction online.

The other family receiving money is the family of Hazel Reiners. She’s a seven-month-old baby, who was diagnosed with Emanuel Syndrome.

There are only 400 cases of the genetic disorder in the world.

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