Number of Participants: 65
Hours Donated: 3.5
Value of Time Served: $1,922
Event Amount Raised: $5,300
Event Type: Children & Youth
Sport: Wrestling
School: Arlington High School
Date: January 28, 2020
Location:
1157 State Rte 55
Lagrangeville, NY 12540
USA
About:
Arlington Wrestling Autism Awareness Night
January 28, 2020 in gym of Arlington High School
Included roughly 65 athletes, 7 coaches, and a few hundred spectators
Started wrestling at 4:30, finished cleaning up close to 8:00. Spectators starting arriving around 3:30.
Raised over $5300, donated to Autism Speaks of the Greater Hudson Valley
To Whom it May Concern:
When I took over as head coach of the Arlington High School varsity wrestling team 3 seasons ago, I wanted to make community service more of a priority. We are fortunate to be a large school in a great community, which affords us a platform and an opportunity for advocacy and charity.
We started small, with selling old gear and accepting donations to go to local families in need and volunteering to beautify the property of a local home for individuals with autism.
In the offseason, when brainstorming how to make a larger impact, we came up with the idea for an Autism Awareness match. As a pediatric physical therapist, I work with students on the autism spectrum and their families regularly. Additionally, we have team families and teammates impacted by autism.
We reached out to autism awareness advocacy groups and decided to donate to Autism Speaks of the Greater Hudson Valley, as they work nationally and locally. We designed a logo incorporating the autism puzzle piece design into our school’s anchor. We used team funds to create special singlets sporting our logo and the statement “Born to stand out” on the back. We then created custom sublimated, dry fit t-shirts to sell, and were fortunate to sell all 300 that we ordered. We solicited sponsors to defray the shirt cost and enticed them with the prospect of also being featured in our tournament program. We wore these shirts as our warm ups for the event as well as selling them to the public. We chose this particular home match, as I work for that school district, and I wanted to be able to promote and sell in both school districts.
Autism Speaks was generous enough to have a presence at our match, sending a representative with pins and bracelets to sell as well as blue pom poms to hand out to the fans for silent cheers. The local paper was nice enough to give us a short write up a few days in advance. In order to allow a larger attendance, we started with our JV matches, and set the varsity match later than usual. In between, I spoke about the prevalence, stigma, functional, financial, and emotional impacts of Autism and my assistant explained the rationale behind silent cheers for the event. In consideration of the sensory difficulties experienced by many on the autism spectrum and seeking to make this night an educational event, we spoke the Pledge of Allegiance rather than playing the National Anthem and did a quiet warm up rather than our usual strobe light and loud music intro.
Sitting in the corner and looking at our stands FULL of our white shirts was surreal. The community support was overwhelming. Not only did we have an outstanding showing competitively, beating our league rival soundly, but we ended up raising over $5300, donated directly to Autism Speaks of the Greater Hudson Valley. While I am ecstatic with the amount we were able to raise in our first year, I look at our inaugural event as a first step to a larger impact in future seasons. We learned what worked, what didn’t, what will work better, and received invaluable feedback on how to raise even more money next year.
Ultimately, the money is great but the advocacy and education make a larger difference in our community. As I told my wrestlers after the match, there is a larger world out there and when they encounter an opportunity to help in any way, they should step up and assist.