Last-Second Opportunity for Blazer’s Edge Night

Blazer’s Edge Readers

We thought we had Blazer’s Edge Night 2020 sold out, but a bank of previously-donated tickets got un-donated at the last second. Can you help us finish out the event? Follow the link at the bottom of this post to see tickets available.

Blazer’s Edge Readers and Portland Trail Blazers fans, we need your help. Since 2006, we’ve been conducting our annual Blazer’s Edge Night, sending kids in need to see the Trail Blazers play when there’s virtually no chance they’d be able to swing tickets on their own. Donated tickets from our readership forms the core of the experience, but it’s so much more than that.

The tickets themselves range from $11 to around $24. That’s not a huge expense for most of us. For many of the families we’re talking about, it is. Our participants come from schools and organizations in economically-disadvantaged areas. $10-20 of disposable income is a hard ask when basics like lunches and winter coats are hard to come by.

But even if a family can scrape together enough for a ticket, how would these young folks make it to the show? How do they arrange transportation to the arena? Who goes with them? How do they get home that night? Once again, things we don’t even think about become nearly impossible obstacles for people who would really love to see a game.

We make a simple promise to the teachers, counselors, coaches, and community service specialists who write us to ask for tickets for their kids: you gather enough adult chaperones and figure out how to get your kids there. We’ll make sure they get in the doors.

People jump at this chance. They arrange for school buses. They check MAX schedules. They recruit parents to drive. The adults are fully prepared to drop off the kids and wait outside. We tell them, “Nah. You come in too. Enjoy watching them watch the game.”

Their response is inevitably, “Oh! We’ll pay for our seats then.”

We say, “No. You’re part of the family. It’s on us.”

When the Moda Center parking lot fills up with school vehicles, whole classrooms of excited kids there with their friends, and beaming adults accompanying, you know it’s Blazer’s Edge Night. We’ve been sending 2000 a year and more. And oh, does the Moda Center rock.

As you might expect, news of the event has spread. This year I hardly had to blink before the 2000 tickets the Blazers allotted to us were spoken for. They still are. Since mid-January, chaperones and students have been preparing for this trip. The date is circled: March 17th. Minnesota Timberwolves. Will Damian Lillard score 50? What if that’s the first night Jusuf Nurkic returns? Even if neither of those things happen, it’s a BLAZERS GAME! They get to go to a BLAZERS GAME!

Except at this point, they might not. The deadline for donations is Friday, February 14th. As of today, we don’t have near enough tickets donated to cover the requests. Unless we rally—getting our friends and neighbors to rally too—the email I send out a week from Friday won’t be a happy confirmation. Instead for more than half of them it’ll read, “I’m sorry, but you can’t come after all.”

We have 12 days to get around 1000 tickets donated. That’s the reality we’re facing right now.

Please, can you take a moment to help? It’s not expensive. It’s not hard. You just order the tickets from the Blazers’ own website using our promo code. Instead of shipping them to you, they set aside the tickets for the waiting participants.

This is the fourth quarter and we need a rally. The link and promo code are just below. Please, can we make the dream a reality for these children and youth one more time?