The men of Greeley West just ended their annual No Shave November contest.

Each year, West teachers can choose to participate in the competition by growing a beard for a charity.  They then collects coins from students to keep the beard growing.  This year, the winner was Mr. David Falter, who has won the competition four times.  Each year Falter chooses a new charity group. This year he chose The Greeley Family House. 

This has been a tradition at West for eight years. It was started by a former English teacher named Mr. Stacy Ruffer, who now works at Fossil Ridge High School. The first year the contest took place, there were over 14 participants.

In 2017, Mr. Kelly Longacre won the contest with 1400 dollars donated and the longest beard. His funding went to the Freedom to Cowboy Up Foundation.

Longacre explained that he didnt compete this year because he was on the trip to FFA Nationals. Although he couldnt make it, he said he thinks its a good connection tradition. “Its a fun way to unify the staff,” Longacre said. 

Social Studies teacher Mr. Ky Dietz has been participating in this contest for eight years, supporting different veterans charities.  He has never won and decided to not participate this year. “ I kept trying to get cash from kids (in years passed), and no one carries cash,” Dietz said. 

English teacher Mr. Colin Shaha has been competing since the very beginning, and has aslo never won. He has tried to help fund the AVID Legacy Scholarship. Shaha explained why the tradition means so much to him. “There was a student in 2014 named Odalys Gomez and the student had asked for a scholarship for themselves, I challenged her to come up with a scholarship for the next class. Since I was there from the beginning, its just so special,” Shaha said.

This year’s amount of participants decreasied at a rapid speed. This year there was a total of four participantsbut nearly 50 male teachers.