The Palo Alto High School volleyball team will host the Dig Pink charity event to raise money for breast cancer research with a volleyball game against Los Altos High School on Thursday at Paly.

Paly and Los Altos will be joining over 1,500 schools across the country in supporting The Side-Out Foundation, a national non-profit organization that contributes funds raised to organizations that serve breast cancer patients in the areas of research, medical services or compassionate support.

This is the first year Paly has participated in Dig Pink.

There will be free admission for everyone attending, and special event t-shirts will be available for sale at the match for $15. Both varsity and junior varsity players will wear their Dig Pink t-shirts to school on Oct. 4 and during warm-ups that night.

In addition, fans of both teams are asked to wear pink.

Jamba Juice will be selling smoothies outside the gym from 6 to 9 p.m., with 20 percent of sales being donated to Dig Pink.

Junior Keri Gee, a defensive specialist, is looking forward to the event.

“This is the first year that we’ve done Dig Pink, and we all got together with the parents and thought that this is a really good cause that we want to support, so we decided to do Dig Pin,” Gee said. “I’m really looking forward to having a good game against Los Altos, and raising money for a good cause, but mostly to see all the boys wearing pink”.

Gee said that the goal is to raise at least $2,000.

Senior setter and co-captain of the varsity team Sophia Bono is also excited.

“I’m looking forward to a lot of digs,” Bono said.

Fans have the choice of making a flat donation or pledge-per-dig donations during the match. Fans can also pledge an amount per total digs between the two teams (the average total number of digs in a match is about 100 according to the volleyball team’s group page).

To donate and for more information on the organization, visit here.