More than 150 golfers participate in Bubba Kapko Memorial fundraiser tournament Monday in Costa Mesa.
By Chris Yemma
Daily Pilot
November 15, 2005
COSTA MESA — He was an Eagle Scout and a captain on his Estancia High football team.
He was a member of the student government, and is described as having an infectious laugh and sense of humor.
Brian “Bubba” Kapko wasn’t supposed to die at age 19. But on Aug. 28, the 2004 Estancia graduate died in a car accident while traveling to Denver with four other people after attending a volleyball tournament in Boulder, Colo.
On Monday, his memory lived on.
More than 150 people participated in the inaugural Bubba Kapko Memorial Golf Tournament on Costa Mesa Golf & Country Club’s Los Lagos course.
Approximately $8,500 was raised, designated for the Estancia Athletic Booster Club and the Bubba Kapko Memorial Fund. It has yet to be decided how the funds will be divvied up, tournament director Jim Huffman said.
Regardless of how the money is divided, the theme of the day was moving forward, Huffman said.
“Everybody seems to have had a great time,” said Huffman, also the girls’ volleyball coach at Estancia. “This was all about having fun and it wasn’t a whole lot about looking back. It was about looking forward.”
Huffman said tournament entries sold out within 24 hours of being announced.
Estancia Athletic Booster Club President Dan Oliver said the goal was to raise around $5,000. But near the end of the tournament, event treasurer Rosie Tomasek estimated the actual number would be up around $8,000.
Huffman confirmed the $8,500 figure later in the evening.
The booster club held a similar tournament last year, raising approximately $10,000 for the Eagles athletic program. There were nearly 100 more golfers at Monday’s event, however.
“This has been a blast,” Oliver said. “We were all out here just to have fun.”
Brian Kapko, who made the Daily Pilot Dream Team as a senior running back and linebacker, was the only one to lose his life in the accident.
According to authorities in Colorado at the time of the accident, the crash occurred when police were chasing a stolen red Honda. When the Honda merged from one freeway to another, it collided with two vehicles, one being the Toyota 4Runner that Kapko and his friends were in.
Kapko was a student at Johnson & Wales University in Denver before the accident.