Copperas Cove shatters record with Peanut Butter Bowl

By SEAN HANEY

Cove Leader-Press

From August 1st to August 26th donations in the form of peanut butter were collected throughout the city by the Copperas Cove Bulldawgs football team and on Saturday, the donations were added up.

With 70 Texas high schools participating in the Peanut Butter Bowl, Copperas Cove set a record for most on-campus donations with 3,081 jars of peanut butter being collected.

Altogether, with online donations and on-campus donations, the grand total came out to 4,016 jars – far surpassing last year’s collection of 1,500 jars.

The commissioner of the Peanut Butter Bowl, Steve Teel, was present on Saturday for Copperas Cove’s 2nd annual counting of the jars of peanut butter.

“We started in 2016 with two schools in San Antonio and then we slowly grew. We kept at those two schools for about three years and in 2019, we expanded a little bit. We did four games in the COVID year 2020. We did 10 games last year,” said Teel, as the jars were being arranged by size.

“An Austin school was coming on board, and they invited Copperas Cove into the mix. It is connected with football as we’re growing throughout the state of Texas. It seems football coaches, including Coach Johnson, the new head coach and Coach Buckram,  are about giving back to the community. It’s really about their leadership and just really loving the community of Copperas Cove.”

Coach Donald Buckram Jr. was all smiles during the entire process of counting jars.

“My dad raised me to be a part of the community. Steve Teel, the Peanut Butter Bowl commissioner, had come down last year and introduced himself to Coach Hammond and I and gave us a breakdown on what the Peanut Butter Bowl entails. In a nutshell, it’s to help a community feed the hungry. It doesn’t matter what city you’re in. Georgetown did it, Stoney Point did it, Austin Bowie  did it too.

“We heard that it’s not really a competition against other schools or any community. It’s not about getting X amount of money or X amount of food. Whatever you get provided here goes to our community. So, it stays home based. Hearing that inclined us to do it because it’s helping our community,” Buckram said. “People need food and now we can provide that source with peanut butter. So, it was an easy collection because there’s only one thing being collected, and we had fun doing it too.”

When all the counting was over, it was split in between two different local organizations to be distributed, Baptist Benevolence Ministries and My Brother’s House Food Pantry.

All the peanut butter will be distributed to the less fortunate and the homeless.

At the moment, the Peanut Butter Bowl is only based in Texas, but Teel said he wants to get schools in other states involved, too.

“I believe this is a great opportunity to help those in need.”