Every year, thousands of stuffed animals go flying through the air, creating a sweet, cuddly moment on the ice in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
The Hershey Bears are a hockey team that plays in the American Hockey League. For the past 25 years, they have been hosting a charity event called the Teddy Bear Toss game.
Fans wait for the home team to score its first goal. As soon as the first goal is scored, everyone throws the stuffed animals they brought with them onto the ice.
The game stops while workers spend nearly an hour collecting all the stuffed animals from the ice. Once they have collected all the toys, they are then distributed among the children who are in need in central Pennsylvania.
On Sunday, Bears defenseman Louie Belpedio scored a goal just three minutes into the game. This set off the storm of 81,796 stuffed animals flying from the seats of viewers onto the players.
“He scores!” the Bears announcer said on the video broadcast. “Sweet cuddly mayhem! It’s a sky full of stuffies! It’s the Teddy Bear Toss magic in Hershey.”
Last year, Hershey Bears even set a world record by collecting 1,02,343 stuffed animals during the event. Since the Teddy Bear Toss started in 2001, it has provided almost 650,000 stuffed animals to kids and families who need them.
One young person has made this cause her personal mission. Gabby Kerchner is a high school junior from nearby Mechanicsburg. She has been a season ticket holder for the Hershey Bears for a long time. The first time she saw the Teddy Bear Toss, it inspired her so much that she decided to do something about it.
Gabby worked with her family to start a nonprofit called Gabby’s Acts of Kindness. The organization collects stuffed animal donations for the team’s Teddy Bear Toss every year. Since she started, Gabby’s group has helped collect more than 1,25,000 stuffed animals and thousands of those were thrown onto the ice on Sunday.
“I think about it every day when I wake up. It’s just so incredible,” Gabby recently told WMPT News–Fox 43. “I realize how much more (those stuffed animals on the ice) mean. That’s why I’m on the edge of my seat during the game. It’s just insane and always an insane number.”
“I definitely think a lot of people don’t really understand what that (Teddy Bear Toss) number means. All the places that it goes puts a tear in my eye,” Gabby said.
This week, kids all over central Pennsylvania received their new stuffed friends. Many toys went to students at the nearby Milton Hershey School. Others were sent to local schools, children’s hospitals, and military families in the area.
