Hershey Bears Hockey Team Set Charity Record with ‘Teddy Bear Toss’
The Hershey Bears sound like a great treat, but alas the name does not refer to chocolate. At least not exactly. The Bears are a hockey team based in Hershey, Pennsylvania. They began as the Swarthmore Athletic Club in 1931 and were founded in '32 after a successful amateur run caught the eye of a local business owner. Milton S. Hershey was the owner of an amusement park and, you guessed it, a chocolate maker. That's right, THE Hershey's.
Now this story has little to do with chocolate, but it will bring you the same amount of happiness that a Hershey bar would. The Hershey Bears have a tradition that they and their fans like to call the "Teddy Bear Toss." After the team scores its first goal during a home game, fans begin throwing thousands of stuffed bears onto the ice! It really is something to see, but this year they broke a record for the most teddy bears donated to charity. There were 34,798 bears collected, beating a previous record of 28,815 set by the Calgary Hitmen in 2015.
I've got many questions. How many bears got cut up by the players' skates? How many bears did the fans in the front 5 rows get hit by? What are the logistics of collecting and donating over 35,000 stuffed animals?