Number of Participants: 55
Hours Donated: 5
Value of Time Served: $2,324
Event Amount Raised: $913
Event Type: Health & Medicine
Sport: Wrestling
School: Edgemont Jr/Sr High School
Date: January 17, 2020
Location:
200 White Oak Ln
Scarsdale, NY 10583
USA
About:
From one of our community emails:
Subject: Can you help us beat cancer this Friday?
Imagine losing a parent or a child way too young – watching them suffer through a terrible illness.
It’s absolutely tragic. It’d be hard to imagine if it hadn’t already happened to so many of us.
Two of our recent Edgemont wrestling grads have each lost their fathers to cancer recently. It sucks. Watching members of our wrestling “family” struggle through this was hard for everyone in our program. It really hit home.
We’re hitting back, though – and we need your help!
This Friday 1/17 at 6 PM, our varsity wrestling team is taking on Irvington in San Marco Gymnasium at EHS to raise money for the American Cancer Society in their memories and your support would mean everything to us.
One of the great things about growing up in a community like Edgemont is how many times we’ve all seen people come together for great causes and rally around each other. This is one of those time.
The fundraiser is simple – all fans will be asked for a suggested donation of $5 or more at the door towards this cause, however a donation will not be required for admission. 100﹪ of the proceeds will be donated to the American Cancer Society.
Irvington is a great rival, against whom we’ve had many exciting matches over the years. We’re sure this Friday will be no different – only now it’s for an even greater cause.
Thanks so much for your consideration and support! We really hope to see you Friday!
– The Edgemont Wrestling Team
Event description:
Our wrestling family at Edgemont was hit hard by cancer recently, as two of our recent grads both had fathers who succumbed to this horrible disease within a year of each other. Our wrestlers saw what they were going through and realized our team was in a position to help. It was awesome to see this realization from our student-athletes and watch them really come together and do whatever they could to support their friends and teammates.
One of the many ways they came up with to help and to make a positive difference was to create a fundraising event to raise money for the American Cancer Society and make a donation in the memory of the two loved ones we lost.
The team reached out to our league rival Irvington HS and asked if we could move our match to a Friday night to boost attendance and if they would be willing to co-sponsor this event with us. They quickly agreed.
Since this idea was born through our wrestlers, we wanted to make sure they fully owned it. We put them in charge of all the logistics, planning and marketing of the event. Under the guidance of our team leaders, the group split responsibilities including putting up flyers around the area, creating social media campaigns on every platform out there, and sending out community emails. Other groups, presented the idea to the entire school faculty (who agreed to take up the cause themselves and help us with the effort!) and to the school administration who agreed to our wrestlers’ request to make announcements throughout the school using our public address system in the days leading up to the event. Our team leaders really stepped up to make sure that everyone had a role to play and a way to assist in the effort.
Through coordination with our Athletic Director the team was also able to the get the message out to all employees of our entire school district – all schools and all buildings – to spread an even wider footprint.
As a coach, I’m tremendously proud of the inspiration, caring, planning and ownership that our wrestlers put into this event for an important and truly meaningful cause.
Through the efforts and ownership of our student-athletes, we were able to pack our gym that night (we normally get about 5 fans!) and were able to raise $913 for the American Cancer Society! Letting our two impacted athletes and their families know about this was a truly touching moment for everyone involved in our program.
The relationships our wrestlers forged with the district faculty and members of our community was another amazing result of these efforts. Attendance at our matches improved throughout the season after this event and I received dozens of emails and comments from members of our community showing such admiration for the caring and selfless efforts of our wrestlers.
And as “icing on the cake” our team competed tremendously that night. In the locker room before the match, our wrestlers decided to dedicate their performance to their impacted teammates, and really drew on the inspiration of the cause, coming away with a hard-fought victory!
