Giving Back to the Less Fortunate

I recently read an article on NorthJersey.com about a young man who is the founder of an organization called “Give and Go Lax.” This organization donates lacrosse equipment and lessons to “underprivileged and under resourced lacrosse programs.”  The reason that this article interested me is that 1) the young man attends my alma mater Tenafly High School and 2) I think what he’s doing is a wonderful way to give back to the less fortunate.

            The article, written by Sean Farrell, the young man, Dylan Reichel, stated that his idea started around early COVID.  Mr. Reichel further stated he “tried to make a little money by teaching lessons” and he then “formed it into a project to give under-privileged and under resourced lacrosse programs more opportunities then we have in Tenafly.” Additionally, he states “it feels good to give back to other comminates and let them play lacrosse as well.”  Reichel comes from a lacrosse playing family as his father played at the University of Michigan and has a brother who is a freshman at Tenafly High School playing on the JV team and a seventh-grade brother who is training on the seventh-grade squad.  At the end of the piece, Reichel says that he wants “Give and Go Lax to become a family run type of organization that gives back to the community.”  Besides the Tenafly High School connection (full disclosure, I do not know Dylan at all) the thought that he is already giving back to younger players and less fortunate communities makes me a proud graduate of THS. Additionally, it makes me think that he has a bright future ahead of him when he finally makes his way in the world.

            This article also brought me back to my coaching days in our local Cal Ripken league.  For some reason, the league partnered up with an inner-city league (if memory serves, the league was outside of Philadelphia) and our league was looking for players and parents to donate new and gently used baseball equipment that could be donated to this league.  Well, the outpouring of equipment that was donated was simply incredible and I was proud to be part of the league that did this, but I was also very proud of my son.  When the announcement was made that the league was looking for donations, he immediately came to me and said and said to me “dad, I have a spare glove that I want to donate.”  Now if you know my son, and I do…his baseball glove was like an extension of his hand, especially during baseball season.  He didn’t go anywhere without his glove, including his grammar school field trips and on trips to look at colleges with my daughter.  So, the fact that he was willing to part with one of his gloves amazed me and definitely made me a proud father.  There was another time when a family in town had a horrific fire in which they lost everything and again the league was looking for donations; and this time the league was looking for donations for everything, not just sports equipment. This was a sport minded family and again my son parted with his bat as he felt that “they needed it more than he did” even though I tried to explain to him that they had lost EVERYTHING in the fire and sports equipment was the least of their worries, but he insisted on giving them the bat. I finally relented and let him donate the bat.

            At this point you could be saying “what does any of this have to do with youth sports?”  Well, actually, it has nothing to do with actual “youth sports” as far as coaching/teaching/playing goes, but it has a lot to do with what we should be teaching our children about helping the less fortunate.  Young Mr. Reichel is making a difference in the lives of the less fortunate and giving them a chance to learn/play a game that they may otherwise not be able to afford by donating equipment, and that’s a good thing.  A quick google search of the costs for playing lacrosse shows that total spending in 2019 to play youth lacrosse came to $1,289 dollars with $280 being attributed to the costs of equipment…a cost that probably prohibitive to many families no matter where they live, this is according to Statista, a German online platform that specializes in data gathering and visualization.

            Another quick google search shows many different organizations that collect and distribute used sports equipment to less fortunate organizations but one stuck out, Let’s Play It Forward.  Let’s Play It Forward is a non-profit organization that was started by a group of teens from Westchester, New York that collects and donates used sports equipment to children in need.  The organization began when a few lifelong friends realized that they had an abundance of unused sports equipment in their garages, and they started calling several organizations to inquire whether they could make use of this equipment and the responses were overwhelming.  The organization was founded in February 2012 and their mission is “to help charitable youth organizations and individuals in need to obtain the gear necessary to play the sports they love” (please note that I am not endorsing this organization, but rather just using it as an example of what types of organizations are out there that do this type of work).  Again, a group of young people looking to assist the less fortunate. I for one would love to see organizations pick up on this type of charitable work and help the players in their leagues see the benefits of doing for others.