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About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 2018)
Sports B1 Appeal Tribune, www.silvertonappeal.com Wednesday, January 10, 2018 A real runaway bride Salem woman runs 5K in wedding dress ABBY LUSCHEI SALEM STATESMAN JOURNAL USA TODAY NETWORK A ngela Watts is an avid runner, but until Dec. 31, she had never run in her wedding dress. • Watts closed out 2017 by running the Resolution Relay in Boring on New Year’s Eve in a gown. • She planned to run the race all along but added the wedding dress as part of her fundraising promise for the “Dressember” challenge. • Dressember is an international movement created by Blythe Hill. In 2009, Hill challenged herself to wear a dress every day in December to bring awareness to human trafficking. After a few friends joined her, Hill realized this could be something bigger, and since 2013, “Dressember” has raised more than $3 million for education and the eradication of human trafficking. This was the second year that Watts, 34, has participated. In 2016, Watts’s goal was to raise $1,000. To encourage her friends and family to donate, she promised to wear her wedding dress one day if she hit that goal. Her mark was met by day 17, so she decided to wear her dress to church. “It helped spread awareness because when people would ask, I would be like, well, there is this cause,” she said. “It helped me tell more people about it.” This December, Watts increased her goal to $3,000. But, she knew she needed to do something more ridiculous than wearing her dress to church. Then her friend came up with the idea to run a race in the dress. “I would post a picture of my dress each day on social media, I did give- aways, anything to get people to donate,” she said. Watts tried to include a fact about hu- man trafficking when she would post her dress of the day. On Dec. 28, Watts was about $360 short of her goal when her friend Jeremy Howell offered to match donations made that day to reach her goal. The matching and other efforts pushed Watts’ fundraising to more than $3,200. “Our team for Dressember is 17 peo- ple, and together we raised more than $6,700,” she said. “The International Jus- tice Mission estimates one rescue mis- sion is about $6,000, so it’s pretty cool that we are going to fund a rescue mis- sion and save one to 10 people from hu- Angela Watts ran the Resolution Relay in Boring on New Year’s Eve in a gown. SPECIAL TO THE STATESMAN Angela Watts and other members of her Resolution Relay team joined in the nuptial fun as well. SPECIAL TO THE STATESMAN man trafficking.” On race day, Watts wasn’t alone. The other members of her Resolution Relay team joined in the nuptial fun as well. Her two girlfriends ran in bridesmaid dresses, and one of their husbands ran in a tuxedo. Their team won the “Best Costumes and Baton” contest. Watts said that they got a lot of “con- gratulations” along the way and had to explain that they did not just get mar- ried. This gave them an opportunity to share their cause. “I certainly didn’t run my fastest 5K,” she said. “I kept reminding myself why I was doing it and that this was such an ac- complishment.” Reach out to Abby Luschei at alus- chei@statesmanjournal.com or call at 503- 399-6747. Follow her on Twitter @abbylus- chei or at www.facebook.com/luscheiabby. Angela Watts wore her wedding dress to church last year after reaching her $1,000 goal for her “Dressember” fundraiser. PHOTO COURTESY OF ANGELA WATTS New year brings dreams of fishing ... OUTDOORS HENRY MILLER There is a palpable sense of promise and po- tential when you fold your new, unblemished, un- stained, wrinkle-free 2018 fishing license into the small, spotless Tyvek envelope and tuck it into your pocket. While simultaneously ignoring the an- nual reality of turning in the previous year’s salmon/steelhead/halibut tag, which is about as pristine as the yet-to- be-used new license. It’s not mandatory to turn your tag in to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which uses the information (but, blessedly, not the names of the per- petrators) for databases about factors such as run timing and angler success. I tend to think of my contribution as striking a blow for the similarly success- impaired. But hope springs eternal, and as the old chestnut goes, “that’s why they call it fishing, not catching.” Although truth be told, one has to ac- tually go fishing before one can attempt catching. And there’s the rub. I caught more fish during a single week in September in Alaska than I caught the rest of the year in Oregon, un- less you count several scouting forays for bluegill and other panfish, which were plentiful and willing, but also di- minutive in size, to say the least. The reason for the discrepancy in win/loss records at home and on the road is in large part because, as in the past, when I was a full-time outdoor writer and columnist for the Statesman Jour- nal, more time is spent talking to and tak- ing pictures of people catching fish than, well, actually pursuing fish. Which come to think about it is a loose but fairly accurate definition of a jour- nalist: A person who chronicles and/or captures images of current events, the object being to report the news, not make it. Did you come here to talk and write, or did you come here to fish? During 2018, I’m hoping that the an- swer will be both. Although if history is a guide, I’m more adept at the former than the latter. Which admittedly isn’t saying much. This just in: The schedule for the an- nual Northwest Fly Tyer & Fly Fishing Expo, which will be March 9 and 10 in Al- bany, has been posted on the event web- site at www.nwexpo.com/index.php. I have attended and enjoyed this an- nual gathering off and on since its larval stages with participants and attendees packed cheek-by-jowl into the circular confines of Wheeler Pavilion at the Lane Events Center in Eugene. According to organizers with the Ore- gon Council of the International Federa- tion of Fly Fishers, schedules for 50 classes on tying, casting and fishing at the show will be posted later this month. Some of the more popular sessions fill quickly, so bookmark and click on the web page throughout the month for up- dates. If you’ve never been, the expo fea- tures round-robin fly-tying sessions where you can watch and learn to tie flies from tag teams of 200 tyers featuring ev- erything from presentation-grade Atlan- tic salmon streamers to bugs for catch- ing panfish. If you click on the link to “featured tyers” on the website, you can see a list of past tying award-winners who are scheduled to put on demonstrations. There also are more than 50 exhibi- tors and vendors, casting demonstra- tions, lessons in tying knots and flies as well as casting practice for kids and new- bies. You can watch the experts demon- strate techniques such as basic overhead and roll casts as well as spey casting. Although I personally have never been asked to demonstrate my singular “flail-and-fail” technique used almost exclusively for hooking and playing streamside foliage on back casts. I digress. There also is a Friday night reception with raffle/dinner ticket packages rang- ing from $400 (table of four) to $10 for a single dinner ticket. Money raised at the event supports two $1,500 scholarships in fishery man- agement at Oregon State University as well as conservation and project grants for International Federation of Fly Fish- ers-affiliated clubs in Oregon. The show opens to the public at 9 a.m. both days at the Linn County Expo Cen- ter, 3700 Knox Butte Road E, Albany. Heading south on Interstate 5, take the Knox Butte exit, then head east and Jim Ferguson, a participant at the Expo and former fly tyer of the year, returns for the 2018 edition. HENRY MILLER/ STATESMAN JOURNAL watch for the signs to the Expo on the right. Henry Miller is a retired outdoor writ- er and columnist for the Statesman Jour- nal. You can contact him via email at HenryMillerSJ@gmail.com