Olie and Stu's Desert Bash Is A Huge Success

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Story Published: Jul 20, 2009 at 10:54 PM PDT

By Keith Leventhal

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The Tri-Cities is home to several big golf fundraisers every summer.

One of the biggest involves some a couple of well-known celebrities.

Olaf Kolzig and Stu Barnes each had long careers in the NHL and, during the off-season, they come back to the Tri-Cities for Olie and Stu's Desert Bash.

This is the 8th year for the golf tournament and auction, and this year, they had one of the best turnouts ever.

There were 33 teams, each with a celebrity, and this year's event was so popular, they actually had to turn a few people away.

Last year's tournament raised over $180,000 for the Carson Kolzig Foundation to fight autism.

And the hosts say this weekend is great, but it's just part of the overall plan.

Stu Barnes says, "We're here to raise as much money as we can for the charity and get the word out about autism and create awareness and again, like I said, there's a lot of great people here that come to town every year and people from the community help support it and its been a lot of fun."

Olaf Kolzig adds, "Eventually, when we live here full-time, we're gonna have a few more fundraisers so that, you know, our long-term goals will be to maybe have a school established for special needs kids, help in the development of a special needs center."

Joining Barnes and Kolzig out on the course were a number of former Americans players, including goalies Carey Price and Chet Pickard, along with Taylor Procyshen and Jason Reese.

And you'll hear from some of those athletes, as well as more from Olie and Stu, coming up later this week.

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