By Lauren Pinheiro, Alex Carder, Vanessa Chen, and Sophia Wu, Photography Editor and Staff Reporters
Girls basketball:
Throughout this past month, members of the girls’ basketball team donated gift cards from local stores to the T&E Care Holiday Drive, including gift cards from Target, Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A. T&E Care provides financial and material assistance to families in need in and around TESD. Junior and varsity player Maggie Neary shared how the donation drive created a greater sense of community among the players.
“In general giving back to the community brings the people that do it closer together because you’re in it for a cause, and it also makes you feel good about yourself, so by donating gift cards we feel like we’ve made an impact and we can celebrate that,” Neary said.
Neary also conveyed that this giving-back team activity was perfect for the holiday season for multiple reasons.
“Especially at our school, we are very privileged,” Neary said “I think that by using our privileges and helping during the holiday season to families who might not necessarily be able to afford (the sport) for themselves or just have these opportunities, I think that it is a great cause.”
Football:
For the holiday season, the football team donated nonperishable foods to the Great Valley
Food Cupboard to give back to the community. Gridiron Booster Club, the football team’s booster club of parent volunteers, set up the event.
The football team donated items including cooking oil, cereal, peanut butter and jelly, canned goods, and more. Players dropped these items off at their banquet on Sunday, Dec. 8.
The drive provided an opportunity for the players to reflect on how they could give back to others. Junior Aidan Smith recounts the food drive and its impact on the community.
“It was something that we could do to give back to the community for people that might be less fortunate than we are,” Smith said “The booster club did a really good job of running it.”
Girls lacrosse:
The girls’ lacrosse team recently gave back to the community by making and donating bags that had holiday supplies in them to help families in the area through T&E Care. Senior and player Maria Ziff talked about how it felt to help the community.
“I think it is really nice and helpful for us to all get together and know that we’re making a difference in our community,” Ziff said.
Junior and player Sofia Calvitti spoke about the effect that the holiday season had on this experience. She feels that it makes it even more important to give back to others.
“The holiday season is a super special time of year to give back to the community, and it gave the team a fun way to help people out even in the offseason,” Calvitti said.
Baseball:
On Nov. 10, members of the varsity, JV and freshman baseball teams participated in a cleanup event at Field of Dreams baseball field. The team’s new coach Anthony Greco, who wanted the baseball program to get involved in more community service activities, organized the event.
Field of Dreams is a community baseball park where Berwyn Paoli Area Little League and other local leagues play. Throughout this fall, Conestoga baseball’s fall league played its games at Field of Dreams. On the day of the cleanup event, 20 to 30 of the boys assisted with repairing and painting wheelchair-accessible ramps, sweeping the dugouts, leveling areas of the playing field, placing flags to mark sprinkler locations, and more.
“The (Field of Dreams) field was able to give us a place to do our first fall league, and we got to use it two times a week, which is great,” senior and varsity pitcher Henry Melrose said. “So if we were gonna play on a field, we wanted to take care of what we were playing on and leave it as we found it.”
Melrose believed that the cleanup event gave him an opportunity to bond with his teammates outside of baseball as well as develop more appreciation for the maintenance of the fields. He hopes that the Conestoga baseball program will continue to give back to the community.
“When you have a gathering of a lot of people who share common interests, it’s easy to get those people to give back to the community and really show our appreciation,” Melrose said. “We have a lot of affluent people living around here, and we’re fortunate enough to be in a good district, so getting all those people together to give back to people who might not have all the things that we do is pretty important.”
Lauren Pinheiro can be reached at [email protected].
Alex Carder can be reached at [email protected].
Vanessa Chen can be reached at [email protected].
Sophia Wu can be reached at [email protected].
