Like Water off a Duck’s Back

Kingfisher Educational Foundation didn’t completely reinvent the wheel when it adopted the now annual duck race as its primary fundraiser 21 years ago.

But it took more than a little trial and error to pull off the first one, former KEF president Pat Cheap said.

“Lynne Howard (KEF vice president) and my brother Mike and I were sitting in my office talking about different ways we might generate money after the Rockin’ Boppin’ Concert had kind of run its course,” Cheap said, referring to the biennial live music show that featured local talent and required weeks of preparation.

“Mike said he’d heard of another town in a different state that had a duck race,” Cheap said.

Cheap and Howard liked the basic concept – “selling” rubber ducks that would then be raced on a body of water, with cash prizes presented to the winners – a game of chance with a twist.

But plenty of details still needed to be ironed out.

First, how much would each chance cost?

“We thought $100 sounded like too much and $25 wasn’t enough to really generate interest,” Cheap said. “So we settled on $50 and started doing the math. If we sell just 100, then that’s $5,000 without much overhead.”

So the first 200 ducks were purchased.

“And then you and Mike drove up to the river,” Howard said, identifying the first in a convoluted series of events that reads like the plot of a children’s picture book.

“I thought, let’s throw them out at the Dover-Loyal Bridge and let them float to the Highway 81 bridge,” Cheap said. “So Mike and I drove out there with one rubber duck to test.”

But the river was low and the duck got tangled up in weeds right under the first bridge and “hardly went anywhere.”

“So we came back to town and I thought, ‘oh, how about Uncle John Creek?” Cheap said. “We could dump the ducks out at Bowman bridge and have everyone standing on the swinging bridge waiting to see which duck showed up first.”

So the hapless test duck got tossed in another body of water.

“About four hours later, it had only gone about halfway to the swinging bridge, so we fished it out again,” Cheap said.

But while the Cheap brothers were in Kingfisher Park, Pat considered another body of water – the Vernie Snow Aquatic Center – and sent their adventurous duck down the spiral water slide, thinking the momentum would be enough to carry it across to the other side.

“It went down the slide fine, but the current at the bottom just kept it circling,” he said.

Undaunted, the two brothers thought they might try the lap pool, but scratched their heads over how they might create a current.

“We were having some air conditioning problems at the office at that time and had a couple of big box fans set out to help circulate air,” Cheap said. “I thought if I could bring a couple of box fans that might create enough current to push the ducks across.”

So the brothers fetched their fans and positioned them at the end of the pool, then tossed in their test duck and a buddy for a trial race.

“It worked pretty good, but the fans weren’t powerful enough to take them all the way across the pool,” he said.

Driving back to their Main Street office, the Cheap brothers passed the Kingfisher Fire Department and noticed the industrial-sized fans used to ventilate smoke after a structure fire has been extinguished.

“The fire chief at the time agreed to bring one to the pool so we could try it,” Cheap said. “Sure enough, when we turned it up high, we could get enough of a wave going to push the ducks to the end of the pool.

“That’s how that came to pass.”

So, OK, they had their ducks and they had a way to race them, now how to sell the idea to the community?

“Lynne started calling about every business in town because it was such a new idea that people really didn’t understand the concept,” Cheap said.

“We walked the streets,” Howard said. “Put in a lot of steps.”

“But people were supportive,” Cheap said. “By that time, people knew about the educational foundation and what we did for teachers and students and everyone said ‘sure, we’ll support it.’”

The first year, about 190 of the 200 ducks were sold and numbered on the bottom, with each donor’s name assigned to a number.

KEF wanted to make the first race part of an event, since the race itself would be over quickly.

“We decided to have a cookout with the initial one,” Cheap said. “We cooked hamburgers and invited the FFA kids to help serve.”

Tyler Mueggenborg, the son of Dennis and Tammy Mueggenborg, played the “First Call” on his trumpet, the traditional bugle fanfare that signals racehorses are headed to the starting gate.

“That ushered everyone inside the aquatic center and onto the bleachers and then we had him play it again before the race started and we turned on the fan,” Cheap said.

“We made $9,500 on the ducks plus we asked for donations for the cookout and people gave extra money.”

That was in 2000. Even subtracting the $1,900 payout ($1,000 - $500 - $300 for the first three places and $100 for last place), the event has been a reliable fundraiser.

Over the years, more ducks have been purchased when annual sales started exceeding the first 200 ducks.

“I’d say we’ve probably made about $200,000 over the last 20 years just through the duck sales,” Cheap said.

“We’ve made a lot of money throughout the years,” Howard said. “It’s been great for the education foundation and everyone has fun and everyone benefits.”

Money raised each year is used to fund innovative classroom grants to Kingfisher Public School teachers to provide educational enrichment for students.

Even though Cheap is no longer a member of the KEF board of directors, he’s held on to one responsibility for the past two decades – he’s still the keeper of the ducks, which are stored in his office until their big day each year.

Duck entries are now on sale for this year’s race, scheduled for 6 p.m. July 1 at the Vernie Snow Aquatic Center, and the entry fee is still the same $50 tax-deductible donation.

Ducks can be purchased from any KEF board member and for the first time can be purchased through a secure portal online at https://bit.ly/KEFDuckRace or by texting the word DUCK to 443-21.