Help Us Make A Difference!!!
I have been involved with sports since the age of seven years old, when I started playing soccer. Since then, I have played various sports (mainly basketball, baseball and soccer) at many different levels.
As I have “aged”, I have come to see and appreciate the great impact all of the sports I was involved with have had on my life. Knowing the impact sports has had on me, it has been a personal goal of mine to somehow help the youth stay involved with sports, in any way I can, however big or small the impact. A story I read in our community newspaper outlined an under 10-year old girls softball rec league team that had not only won their league, but also won a qualifying tournament to compete for a national championship (a tournament nobody expected them to do well in). It was the first time that a rec league team had qualified to do so. So imagine that…you’re on this team, not expected to do well in the qualifier, and you WIN it AND a chance to travel to, Florida, I think it was to play for a national title! A BIG DEAL for a 8 or 9-year old, I would think. The ending of the story is that the team never went – due to financial reasons. I can only imagine the heartbreak and the conversation: “I’m sorry honey…I know you played hard, and I know you won, but we can’t go”.
My initial thought was if there was a way I could send the entire team – I would. Well, we may not be able to send teams of players to travel (yet), but we can start by giving players a chance. There are “no free lunches” (worth eating anyway) today, and we understand that.
So, at Next Level Basketball Training, we have established a “Make An Assist” donation account, from which the funds will be used to help begin, maintain or prolong a players’ time “in the game” and begin to help dreams come true.
Your donations will be used to help individuals pay for their league fees or other fees incurred for sports, in a time of “unusual circumstances”, and can be made anonymously. Our goal is to get to a level to give substantial scholarships and to help teams not miss out on what could be “once in a lifetime” chances – as was the case with the softball team above.
Any amount helps, and we are truly appreciative of those who have given and will give an “assist” to those young individuals with not only “Hoop Dreams”, but dreams in general.
(FYI: Donations will remain anonymous unless you wish for us to publish your name. We have no problems doing this, as people should know that you made a difference!)
