Number of Participants: 60
Hours Donated: 3
Value of Time Served: $1,521
Event Amount Raised: $10,000
Event Type: Civic & Community
Sport: Football
School: Sleepy Hollow High School
Date: November 2, 2020
Location:
Sleepy Hollow High School
Sleepy Hollow, NY
USA
About:
My name is Jorge Veintimilla. I am the head football coach at Sleepy Hollow High School in Sleepy Hollow NY.
This past spring as the COVID Pandemic took hold of our community and our nation, our team took initiative in helping support our community’s first responders and local businesses.
With many of our players family members and alum being first responders, and our community businesses being shut down due to the virus, our Varsity Football team looked for a way to give back to these important areas of our small community. We knew the stress of this unprecedented time on those men and women working the front lines as well as the stress of small businesses losing a substantial amount of revenue could be very hurtful for our community.
With the help of our team leaders, we created “Horsemen Meals For Champions” which raised over $10,000 to provide meals to our first responders including police, fire, nurses and doctors at Phelps Hospital, childcare workers for first responders and families in need within our community. Every donation raised was used to provide meals from restaurants in our small town This fundraiser allowed us to support those same businesses that selflessly provide our teams with many meals throughout the season.
We would like to submit our Team Up entry as it was done by our football team who usually play in the fall. Though we are hoping to play our season in the spring, our coaching staff would love to see our team recognized for their selfless acts or kindness, humanity and community during this troubling time.
We had a majority of our athletes help out in some form. We used social media as our primary way of communicating our fundraiser. Just about the entire program (JV and Varsity) helped share our goal. Roughly 50+ players helped with this. In addition, we had our Leadership Council which is about 10 students work with Senator Harkham at his food drive where we donated $300 of the funds raised to his event.
The event lasted from early april until mid June. Our kids and their families raised money and we were able to provide 1000’s of meals from the moment we started until we no longer were raising money. We raised over $10,000 in such a small time to feed our first responders while buying all meals from our local restaurants.
One of our players made a video to show our community what we were doing and how people could help.
Our account to raise money is still open and we are prepared to continue this if our community faces another shutdown as we saw in March-June from Covid. We have many families who we helped provide meals and gift cards to from this fundraiser and if need be, we are ready to do this again.
Though I know the criteria is for fall 2020, our football team did spring to action during this troubling time.
I hope you consider that many of these seniors who did not get a fall football season took so much pride in giving back to our community. As their coach, I was beyond proud to see them get excited as we were able to provide more meals to the first responders. It was amazing to see how excited they were knowing that their efforts were literally helping keep their favorite deli in town open so that when school reopened it would be there for them.
Here is an article written by our local newspaper