February 25, 2022

Effingham Daily News

Stan Polanski

stan.polanski@effinghamdailynews.com

Hello, Stan Polanski,

I am contacting you with hopes that you will devote time to promote the Special Olympics Polar
Plunge, an event that will take place at the Effingham Water Authority. The event will take place
on Feb. 26 at 10 a.m. Furthermore, Polar Plunge will offer prizes to be awarded in several
categories to the participants. Additionally, the event will benefit the Illinois Special Olympics
athletes.

To help build awareness about the event, I have included a few story angles to assist you in
creating content for your news story.

Polar Plunge: Open-Invite: What can be better than an event with open-invite? Anyone with
little guts and a warm heart willing to help Special Olympics athletes is encouraged to
participate. Previous participants have included children and adults, fraternities and sororities,
high school clubs, police officers, mayors and football players.

Polar Plunge Promotes Friendship: Jumping into the icy waters in the middle of winter with
others in your community - what else could you do for a crazy adrenaline rush? This will
encourage participants to bond with each other after participating in a cool event - literally. All
participants are in it together!

Polar Plunge Benefits Everyone: The Special Olympics main mission is to provide year-round
sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and
adults with intellectual disabilities. Participating in the Polar Plunge will help them achieve this
goal. Meanwhile, the participants can earn prizes and sweatshirts for their participation.

Given that you have covered events in the Effingham community, I would appreciate it if you
continued that coverage with the Special Olympics Polar Plunge. For more information about the
event, feel free to contact me by email or by phone.

Thank you,

Danielle Denning

Special Olympics

630-788-2565

dcdenn1@ilstu.edu