IU football coach Cignetti headlines Boys & Girls Clubs fundraiser, says 11–2 mark last season 'not a great year'

The first big fundraising event of the year for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bloomington was held on Thursday night in the gymnasium of the Ferguson Crestmont Club.

Fundraising is the bridge between the membership fee of $20 and the $750 per child that it takes to provide BGCB programs and services, according to Leslie Abshier, who is now CEO of the nonprofit.

Targeted for fundraising support for Thursday's event was a Boys & Girls Club program called "Boys to Men," which is a program that pairs mentors with teenage boys to support their emotional growth. The corresponding program for girls is called "Smart Girls, Strong Women." This year, the SGSW fundraiser is set for the fall, featuring Vera Jones—who is a former Syracuse University basketball star turned motivational speaker, author, and ESPN broadcaster.

It was four months ago, when Abshier took the handoff from Jeff Baldwin, who was the longtime head of BGCB. Abshier's first big fundraiser as CEO can go into the win column, because Thursday's event raised around $250,000 through tickets, event sponsorships, and the live auction. But that's still less than half what BGCB will need to raise this year through fundraising, to fill in the gap between grants and its roughly $4.2 million budget.

The featured guest for Thursday's event was Indiana University football coach Curt Cignetti. The second-year head of the Hoosiers program was interviewed by Don Fischer, whose half-century-long radio broadcasting career of calling play-by-play for men's basketball and football games has earned him the moniker "Voice of the Hoosiers."

When he was introduced by Fischer, the crowd of around 360 people gave Cignetti a standing ovation. Last year, in his first season, Cignetti coached the Hoosiers to an 11–2 overall record and an 8–1 mark in Big Ten play. Even after losing to Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff, the team was ranked No. 10 in the final AP Poll.

Cignetti was not content with the 2024 season. At Thursday's fundraiser, he put it like this: "It was not a great year. I mean, we didn't finish that season the way you gotta finish. That wasn't a great year. Just so we all understand. I mean, you gotta finish what you start, right? And we learn those lessons and come back strong."

Some insight into why Cignetti didn't consider last year's 11-2 campaign to be a great year came when he was asked by Fischer to talk about a mentor—someone he learned more from than anybody else. Cignetti named Nick Saban, the coach of the University of Alabama football team from 2007 to 2023. Cingetti served on Saban's coaching staff: "I was part of the original group [at Alabama] for four years, and he really was at the top of his game then," Cignetti said.

Cignetti continued, "We were taking over a program that was not a winner. I mean, we were 7–6 our first year, lost to Louisiana-Monroe at home the 11th game of the year. But. That first recruiting class? Six first-round draft choices. And Year Two, 12–0 in the regular season. And then the following year 14–0, won a national championship." Cignetti added, "I just learned how to run a program from A to Z. High level stuff for my industry. It's really not that complicated." Summing up Saban, Cignetti said, "All the guy was, was organized, structured, committed and disciplined. I mean, he had a plan for everything."

Asked about this season's spring practice, Cignetti told Fischer that between now and the start of the season in the fall: "We'll get out what we put in. And we gotta have a great summer. Get everybody thinking alike. Everybody will be better in the fall than they were in spring. Happens all the time. And form those intangibles, and go out, kick some ass!"

Even if the big draw was the Cignetti interview, generating plenty of excitement on Thursday was the live auction. Serving as auctioneer was Paul Wyman, a real estate agent and owner of the Wyman Group.

One of the auction packages included a round of golf at Pete Dye Course Golf Course in French Lick and lodging at West Baden Springs Hotel. It drew interest from the presenting sponsor of the event, local attorney Ken Nunn. After Wyman started the bidding, Nunn raised his bid number in the air, and just held it there, even when there were no bidders left. Even as Wyman ratcheted the price higher, in increments of $1,000, long after there were no other bidders in the mix, Nunn did not flinch. Nunn had the winning bid.

Nunn's large bid for the round of golf came up as a comedic bit a little later, when Jay Baer took the stage. Baer joined Wyman to help generate bids for the private tequila tasting package that Baer had donated to the auction. Baer could be familiar to B Square readers as a member of the Monroe County capital improvement board, which is overseeing the convention center expansion—but was appearing at the Boys & Girls Clubs fundraiser in his guise as the second most-popular tequila influencer in the world.

Baer led off by saying, "I am really disappointed." Baer continued, pausing in a couple of places for dramatic effect: "The only thing I wanted to do…was drink tequila…with Ken Nunn!" Baer continued, "And it feels like that's not gonna happen now, because he paid 10 Bitcoin for a golf course that's there 365 days a year. This is one night of tequila!" [At the current exchange rate, 10 Bitcoin is a little less than $1 million—Baer was using it as shorthand for "a very large amount of money."]

During the bidding, Baer added to the package to drive the bids higher. "I'm gonna add five more bottles of tequila, but not just good ones—five single barrel bottles." Baer described the bottles he was adding as "rare, rare, rare, rare, rare—hand signed, hand numbered."

Also on Thursday, Cal Kinman, who is the teen program director at the Ellettsville Boys & Girls Club, was named winner of this year's Boys to Men Leadership Award. Presenting the award to Kinman was last year's winner, Cornelius Wright.