For the second straight season, the Jaguar Hockey Club will mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month by collecting funds to benefit the Pink Heals Joliet Chapter.

Throughout the month of October, the Jaguars will be passing around a pink "goal can" during each of its home games. The hope is that supporters of both the Jaguars and their opponents will place a donation in the goal can after each of the first three goals in the game -- no matter which team scores.

All of the money raised will be donated to the Pink Heals Joliet Chapter, the same organization that benefitted from the club's Breast Cancer Awareness Month efforts last season. Last year, the Jaguars collected $1,200 for the cause.

The local "Guardians of the Pink Ribbon" are an arm of a national Pink Heals organization based in Phoenix. Founded in 2007, the organization was formed to support women battling all types of cancer.

Each year, the Pink Heals National Tour travels across the U.S. in pink fire trucks and stops in different cities each day. The tour made a stop at Joliet Memorial Stadium in July. Adorned with signatures written in black permanent ink, the trucks serve as a monument and, once painted pink, will never be repainted.

The signatures on the truck are those not only of cancer survivors and, in some cases, those who have lost their battle against the disease, but also of anyone – male or female – who has ever known anyone who has battled any form of cancer.

Matt Fleck, a local Guardian of the Pink Ribbon, stressed during a stop at a Jaguar Hockey Club event last May, that the emphasis is not on breast cancer alone.

“We use pink not just for breast cancer, but because it’s the color of women,” he said then.

Anyone who would like additional information about the local Pink Heals can find it on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pink-Heals-Joliet-Area-Chapter/110293445779804. Donations can be dropped in the goal can at any Jaguar home game this month or mailed to Heartland Bank, c/o Pine Heals Joliet, 700 W. Jefferson St., Shorewood, IL, 60404.