Fans who attend tonight’s wrestling match between New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva and Waterville-Elysian-Morristown/Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton can do more than just watching the action on the mat, they can help take down cancer.

NRHEG will accept donations at the match tonight, with proceeds going toward the Randy Shaver Cancer Foundation. Panthers head coach Shawn Larson said that doing a charity event like this was an emphasis at the coaches meeting earlier this season.

“They suggested that since there’s the ‘tackle cancer’ for football and ‘dig pink’ for volleyball that wrestling should have one too,” Larson said. “So we kind of jumped in with a bunch of other schools that were doing it.”

Donations were taken at the school, which is made up of students from New Richland, Hartland, Ellendale and Geneva. Rather than buying a T-shirt, students were asked to just donate what they would spend on a shirt. If enough money was raised, Larson said he was going to wear a pink shirt while coaching. He said his pink shirt is “on standby.”

“It was an incentive for them,” Larson said. “Because pink is definitely not my favorite thing.”

There were no fundraising goals for the event. Larson said he was just going into it with an “anything helps” mentality.

“If you don’t do anything it’s not going to get better,” he said. “Maybe the amount of money that we raise doesn’t do much, but it’s doing something. That’s basically why I think it’s important to do now.”

Larson said that he hoped to make the match a tradition and maybe turn it into a fundraising competition between NRHEG and a rival school.

“Maybe a traveling trophy for raising money for cancer,” he said. “It just didn’t pan out this year.”

Match time tonight is set for 7 p.m. and donations can be made at the door. Anyone who would like to donate but can’t make it to the match can drop off a donation at the school’s main office in New Richland. Larson said that he would be sending the money to the foundation early next week.