48.0°,
Overcast Long Island’s largest water balloon fight
Over 10,000 water balloons awaited the crowd of 200 on Aug.12, in the field behind Saint Anthony’s Church on Anchor Avenue in Oceanside. It was billed as Long Island’s largest water balloon fight, and organized by Oceansider Kash Calderon.
“I decided to do this event, and donate some of the money raised to the Saint Anthony’s Youth Ministry,” Calderon said, “because I was in the ministry all through high school and it was good for me so I wanted to give back. I wanted this event to be community based.” He was able to donate $200 to the ministry.
Calderon, who has starting college now, has planned and executed several types of fun events including a foam party, a neon paint party and an anything but clothes party, where attendees had to come dressed in anything but clothes. That led to some creative costumes, he said. He wants to learn more about the professional party planning.
“I learned a lot from this event. It did not turn out the way I expected,” Calderon explained. In the beginning you lay out your plans and projections. “You think you know who will attend. This time our demographic shifted. I expected lots of high school kids, junior and senior high school kids and recent graduates. What I got was a lot of middle school kids and their families.” He said it was a great learning experience because when demographics of the event changed he had to “go with the flow”. The income projections changed and the pricing model did not work out as planned and he was not able to give the Church as much money as he wanted to. “I will have to look at what we did, and how the actual event worked, and yes, there will be changes made.”
