By TJ ENGLE

It was through the actions of Tiffani Christman and her supporting cast that Palmerton's version of "Save Our Sports" came to life a few weeks ago.With heart-warming support from the local community, "SOS" was able to attain its mission of rescuing seven sports wrestling, swimming, tennis, boys' and girls' cross country, and boys' and girls' soccer.When Christman received word of the plan by the Palmerton School Board, she didn't hesitate.The fact that the board was considering cutting sports programs struck close to heart for Christman since her three sons (Jake, Zack and Lucas), her husband Jim and herself are all involved in one of the sports that would have been cut."I'm the President of our Youth Wrestling Association and our high school Wrestling Association and all three of my boy wrestle," said Christman when asked what sparked her to initiate "SOS." "So, obviously this was devastating news to me. Our family we eat, sleep and breathe wrestling. We spend weekends at tournaments and my husband is a youth coach."Just the thought that wrestling was going to be dropped at Palmerton High School ... it had our whole wrestling team in an uproar."The first step "SOS" took was to initiate a "Silent Protest." It occurred right outside the Parkside Elementary School where the school district was holding an Executive Meeting. Through a simple posting on Facebook and the word of mouth, about 500 supporters showed the school board that they were truly concerned about the matter.The next step was to help raise the funds $66,300 that were needed to keep the threatened sports programs from being dropped.After researching the Colonial League by-laws, Christman found it stated that a school meeded to field teams in 70-percent of sports the league sponsors. So, it was no longer just those seven sports that were in jeopardy of being affected. It was the entire sports department that would be hit since they would now not be allowed to participate in the CL.With that was made known, "SOS" received even more support.Funds were raised through multiple methods, including a "bucket brigade" along Delaware Avenue, individual $50 patrons, and business sponsorships that ranged from $250 to a $1,000."Basically, we didn't sell anything," said Christman. "No candy bars. No bake sales. Nothing like that. It was all just monetary donations."We did get an exceptional donation from Pencor Services, Inc. of $7,500 and that definitely helped us an awful of a lot. We were just overwhelmed and amazed with all the support that we got from the Palmerton area."Christman said she was amazed by how quickly the money added up."Honestly, I wasn't sure how much money we were going to be able to raise in 12 days because that was basically the time frame that they were originally giving us," Christman said. "When the donations started to come in, every time I would get one I would get a little emotional because they were unexpected."Christman was also touched by the actions of others outside the local boundaries.Christman stated a senior from Northern Lehigh, Michael Hofmann, wrote a well-written letter to the school board stating why he felt they needed to keep sports at Palmerton. In addition, Christman received an unsolicited check in the mail from the Northwestern Lehigh wrestling team with the message in the the memo that said, "Go Bombers."Raquel Serfass-Lutton, the treasurer for the Northwestern Lehigh Booster Club, said she first heard about Christman's "SOS" plan from another Tiger wrestling mother and saw it for herself on Facebook.As a wrestling parent herself, Lutton said she also spends endless hours in local gyms and days at tournaments.Pointing out the fact that the "wrestling community is one big family and we all know each other," Serfass-Lutton took action."I talked to Coach Jim Moll about showing our support and he was all for it," she said. "We had been emailing each other about how we can show it. I brought up Palmerton's situation at our next board meeting. The board approved the donation immediately with a unanimous vote."Palmerton is a tough competitor in the Colonial league and all our schools would lose if they could not compete."In the end, the project started by Christman did what it set out to do it saved several sports programs at Palmerton High School."It may have been my idea and I may have spearheaded this - but there were so many other people that were responsible," Christman said. "This just wasn't me that did this. It took a lot of people and a lot of people to ask for the donations and send out the emails. It was a lot of work."