The Brentwood Athletic Booster Club will be presented with a $3,000 check today from Team Up 4 Community, a nonprofit that is rewarding student-athletes for completing nearly 8,500 community service hours during the holiday season.
About 800 children in the Brentwood Union Free School District — from the fencing, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, track, football swimming and soccer teams — completed the service hours in a 30-day period between November and December, according to John Rueb, president of the booster club.
The effort was part of the nonprofit’s Long Island Holiday Sports Challenge, where schools in Nassau and Suffolk counties signed up to collectively fulfill 10,000 community service hours.
“There’s a big need in the Brentwood area for help from others from the outside, there’s a lot that are going without,” Rueb said. “It’s nice to see these kids step up for their neighbors and their classmates.”
The volunteers in grades 3 through 12 helped in food, toy, clothing and coat drives, as well as feeding the homeless, coaching younger children and cleaning up courtyards around the neighborhood.
Team Up 4 Community — an international community giveback project with the W20 Foundation, which was started by former New York Islanders’ player Steve Webb — will present the check during halftime at the boys varsity basketball game at the Brentwood High School Sonderling Gymnasium. The game starts at 4 p.m.
The Moriches Youth Lacrosse-Blue Devils also received a grant of $1,500 and Alexis Gonzalez, a Long Island University softball player, received $500.
Source: Newsday: http://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/long-island-now-1.1732330/community-events-today-and-ongoing-1.6751579
