IT was a rare sight for the community of Swan Hill when a helicopter dropped thousands of golf balls on the Showgrounds oval.
The helicopter golf ball drop was the culmination of recent fundraising, which has so far seen more than $45,000 raised for local netballer Kelsey McCoy, who was recently diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The Kelsey McCoy Fundraiser Committee organised the event, which was held at the Swan Hill Football oval.
Committee member Lauren Monahan said it was an exciting day which saw a great turn out.
The ball drop took place between the club’s junior presentations and senior vote count.
“We thought it would just be the members watching, but we looked around and saw a lot of cars — there was a lot of the community there,” Ms Monahan said.
“We were surprised by the turn out, it was really nice.”
Paul Morrison and Gaynor Hayward were the big winners on the day, both recieving $1000. Mr Morrison won the golf ball drop, while Ms Hayward was the main lottery winner.
“We thought we would need a measuring tape and we’d be measuring in millimeters because there were so many balls, but there was a clear winner,” Ms Monahan said.
“It was really exciting — the helicopter pilot did a great job of keeping the chopper where it was when the balls were dropping. We thought it would happened in 10 seconds, but it took around one minute to release all of the balls.”
Ms Monahan thanked everyone who supported the event and donated money for Kelsey’s cancer treatment.
