Team Bal kicked off their first golf outing of the 2021 season with Gateway Technical College’s Foundation Scramble on Thursday, May 27th at Hawk’s View Golf Club. While Mother Nature served up less than desirable conditions with howling wind and slanted rain, our golfers powered through the meteorological challenges in support of the technical college.

Anthony Balestrieri and long-time friend and vendor Don Sukala of Mid-Lakes Plumbing have been attending these golf outings for years as Anthony designed the three-wing administration building that resides on the Elkhorn campus, a stone’s throw from the Balestrieri office, in the late eighties. Following the build, Gateway and Balestrieri kept the partnership going, hiring Balestrieri again for renovations approximately six years later. Said Balestrieri, “We did major editions on the North wing and East wing for classrooms, and we did major work on the South building and an addition to the North and East buildings in 1994. We’ve been going to the golf outings ever since.”

Anthony Balestrieri worked with the Elkhorn campus’s vice president Patrick Flannigan and Gateway college’s former corporate counsel Robert Nickolli to build and renovate the buildings. Both have since retired, but Anthony kept the partnership going by introducing Ken Balestrieri to Bryan Albrecht, Gateway’s president, at one of the technical college’s annual golf outings.If it is any indication of the future partnership between Gateway and Balestrieri, project manager Alex Balestrieri and field manager Seum Ladarom were two of the few golfers to complete the eighteen holes for a late May afternoon that could have been confused for late October. A show of good faith for continued future project collaboration.