Grateful. Awesome. Teams. Support. Wish granted. FANTASTIC!

Just some of the words to describe the Championship and entire contest. Bottom line: The event raised over $11,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation! Which will grant a child’s wish…and then some. That was the whole point and we couldn’t be more grateful and excited.

L-R: Mike Hill ESPN, Kim Smith Make-A-Wish, Greg Gardner GM J.Timothys, Howie Schwab ESPN. (ooof, terrible quality, sorry, but we’re not exactly professionals )

The winners: Wing It On Warriors! Congratulations!

More later. For now, THANK YOU to all of the teams; they really made this happen.

Very excited to announce that ESPN’s Mike Hill will be joining us for the Championship on Saturday. Mike started at ESPN as an anchor for ESPNEWS, and now is usually seen on SportsCenter, but also fills in as a host on ESPN First Take, NFL Live and Baseball Tonight.

He also co-hosts ESPN Radio’s Hill & Schlereth (7-10 p.m. ET M-F), which debuted January 10, 2012, featuring Hill and Mark Schlereth, a three-time Super Bowl champion. And he’s awesome on Twitter, you should follow him!

Hope to see you Saturday! And thanks, Mike, for supporting Make-A-Wish!

The Finals are all set! Congratulations to Team Fowl Play, who competed in the first Playoff, but did not win. But wow, are they winners! They collected the most donations for the Make-A-Wish Foundation so they are the Wildcard Card Team for the Finals. Nice job and thanks, Fowl Play!

So the 4 teams are: Team Eye Candy, Team T.E.A.L., The W.I.O. Warriors and Fowl Play. The fun begins Saturday at 5:00 pm; the event should be complete by 8:00pm. The admission/donation is $10 and includes a FREE BEER! Plus, we’ll be playing “Stump The Schwab” with Howie Schwab from ESPN.

We’ve reached 90% of our fundraising goal, WOW! We really hope Saturday’s Championship pushes us over the top so we can fulfill a wish for a child with a life-threatening medical condition. We’re almost there. Hope to see you on Saturday!

Team Fowl Play:

And the 4 Finalists:

The 3rd and final Playoff Round was just as fantastic as the previous two! Here are the winners, the W.I.O. Warriors, from Wing It On restaurant in Waterbury. Congrats!

All of the teams were great; once again, thanks so much for supporting the Make-A-Wish Foundation. After Playoff Round #3, we’ve now reached 75% of our fundraising goal, which will grant a wish to a child with a life-threatening medical condition. YAY!

Above: Team AAA Wing Nuts; great costumes and wonderful supporters! Team El Pollo Loco; great costumes and they insisted on Corona’s when eating their wings. Way to stay with the theme! And Team The Welch Family. Our State Senator Jason Welch and his family, ages 7-15, competed and were leading at one point!

We’re so grateful to everyone who participated. THANK YOU! Now on to the Championship, which is Saturday, September 8th at 5:00 pm.

What a night! Fantastic teams, fantastic supporters – standing room only – and we’re now over halfway to our fundraising goal for Make-A-Wish, WOO!

We cannot say enough about the teams participating; they are all so supportive of the cause, embracing the spirit of the event while being awesome competitors. While reading this, please give a round of applause to all of the teams! Thank you!

Congratulations to the winners, Team T.E.A.L., who have a very special story: Pete’s (on the left) daughter Kira (pictured) was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was 16. After surgery and chemotherapy, she has now been cancer-free for 2 years, yay! But during that time, the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted her wish and sent the family to Hawaii for some much needed recuperation and relaxation. Team T.E.A.L (Take Early Action and Live) is competing to say thanks to Make-A-Wish and to raise funds so another child’s wish can be granted.

When we started planning this charity event we could only hope that people would be excited to participate. As described, the teams are exceeding our wildest expectations. And the supporters; people coming out to cheer on the teams and donate money have been soooooo wonderful.

Here’s a collage of some pics from Playoff Round #2: Team Ding Dong the Wings are Gone (with a Toto!), The Chicken Lickin’ Ninjas, our volunteer referees Russ, Renee and Alex (chicken heads!), and some of the crowd cheering on their team (the Lollipop Guild!).

Thanks to everyone for supporting Make-A-Wish! Hope to see you next week for the final Playoff Round: Thursday, August 30th at 7:00pm. $10 admission/donation includes a free beer!

Our excitement for Playoff Round #2 is palpable (Not exactly sure what that word means, but sports announcers use it all the time, so WIN!). The first playoff was so awesome; here’s a picture that shows some of the fun:

A team with chicken heads? A team with candy bar t-shirts? The head referee having maybe too much fun? Yea, it was awesome.

Please come out on Thursday, 8/23 at 7pm to support the teams and the Make-A-Wish Foundation! Your $10 admission/donation includes a FREE BEER FREE BEER FREE BEER. Ha, we’re shameless when it comes to this charity.

Teams competing on Thursday:

The Chicken Lickin’ Ninjas
Ding Dong the Wings are Gone
The Phat Phive
Poultry Punishers
T.E.A.L.
Wings 4 Wishes

Hope to see you there.

Whoa, what a great night! Five teams competed and we needed a tiebreaker to declare the winner: Wings Over My Hammy! Here they are with their official (ha) trophies:

Congrats to the team from CCSU, Wings Over My Hammy, for their win and to 2nd place Team Eye Candy. And BIG thanks to the other teams for being great competitors. Every team brought out so many supporters; the crowd was amazing! We’re one-third of the way towards our goal to fulfill a child’s wish for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

See you next week, Thursday, August 23rd at 7pm for Playoff Round #2.

Apologies for using the, uhh, overused phrase from the movie Almost Famous, but The Playoffs Are Starting! The Playoffs Are Starting! The Playoffs Are Starting! And now, apologies to Paul Revere.

Thursday night at 7pm, the competition starts with 5 teams competing; eating the most wings possible in 8 minutes. Please come out and cheer on the teams, but even more importantly, support the CT Chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Admission is $10 and goes directly to the charity. But, a free beer is included with that admission price.

The teams for Thursday are:

Fowl (Fulfill Our Wing Lust) Play
Team Eye Candy
W.M.D. (Wings Massively Devoured)
Wing-A-Lings
Wings Over My “Hammy”

Hope to see you there!

We had our Team Meeting last night which was awesome! The teams are wicked fun and, most importantly, they are all very dedicated to raising as much money as possible for Make-A-Wish. Woo! Go Teams! Thanks so much for being part of this event.

Kelly from the team “Ding Dong the Wings are Gone” had a great idea: each team can set-up their own online donations page at the Make-A-Wish website so family, friends and people who aren’t in the area can support their team. This is important for 2 reasons: 1) Duh, money for Make-A-Wish!, and 2) the donations will count towards a team’s total donations for the Wildcard entry spot. Remember: if your team does not win your playoff, you can still make the Finals by soliciting the most donations. Click here to see “Ding Dong the Wings are Gone”‘s donations page. To set one up for your team, Kelly provides these helpful – and easy – instructions:

- Go this page at the Make-A-Wish CT Chapter’s website: http://friends.wish.org/054-000/
- Click on “Register for your Account” and follow the instructions from there.
- After entering your basic info, there is a place to enter information about the specific fundraiser (J. Timothy’s Wings for Wishes).
Once the page is set-up, you’ll get an approval email from Make-A-Wish.

Then just send the link to EVERYONE YOU KNOW, ha. Facebook it, Tweet it, email it, blog about it; whatever works. Oh look, another team as set-up their donations page too, check it out. Yay to the Phat Phive!

And don’t forget you can fill up your buckets with donations too, of course. After the meeting, some teams hit up some folks in our pub:

Way to be proactive and grab some donations!

We also added a cool feature: Teams can choose what music they want played while competing/eating the wings. Who’s going to pick the best “wing eating song”?

And here is a document you can open/download with the rules and the waiver. WFWWaiverRules

Playoffs start Thursday, August 16th from 7-9pm. See you then!

Check out the Teams that are participating and the Playoff schedule, click here.

The Playoffs start Thursday, August 16th and continue August 23rd and August 30th, each night 7-9pm. The Finals are Saturday, September 8th from 1-6pm. C’mon out to support the teams and the Make-A-Wish Foundation!

Thanks so much to all 18 teams and to the 90 (!) players for supporting the event and Make-A-Wish.

Mmmmmm, it’s almost time to start eating some wings!