SINCLAIRVILLE, NY (WNY News Now) – A team of mini football players are banding together in Sinclairville to raise money for their team.
A lot of hidden expenses go into maintaining a team’s gear, equipment, and morale, so this year the tiny team is holding a bottle drive and a shoe drive for the Cassadaga Midget Football team.
“Our can drive goes on pretty much the whole season, we have Cash for Cans and Don’t Trash It in Falconer, so anytime anyone can just take bags of cans there and let them know it’s for the Cassadaga Midget Football League and they’ll put all of that money towards our fund,” said coordinator Victoria Mckay. “This weekend we’re going to do a can drive, we’ll have everybody bring whatever they can to our games this weekend starting at nine this Saturday.”
The league is hoping to raise enough for new gear, but also have some funds to be able to reward these young athletes with pizza parties and fun activities.
“We really are starting from the ground up. All of our helmets are going to expire in a couple of years, we need new shoulder pads, we’ve got 138 kids registered this year and more than half of them are football players,” said Mckay.
The volunteers want the best for the kids.
“We got new uniforms in 2019 because we hadn’t had uniforms in many, many, many years, and those were hand-me-downs from the high school. Our league isn’t even a part of the school, the school lets us use this facility so we have to base it all on donations to keep our league running,” said President Stefani Penhollow-Pierce. “One thing I want to get for the cheerleader aspect uniform wise is either warm ups or rain gear because they’re out here just like the football players but they don’t have as many clothes as the football players and it’s just not as comfortable. They used to have them, but we didn’t have enough because the funds weren’t there.”
There are so many kids joining the league, but not enough resources.
“It’s a lot, and when we don’t even have that many helmets and we have to try to predict for the next year and then we find out at the start of our season that we can’t even order the helmets so we have to search and borrow from other teams if they happen to have a size that we can even use, it’s a struggle,” said Penhollow-Pierce.
The Midget Football league has many fundraising opportunities that rely on community involvement. To learn more about participating in a fundraiser, or to make a donation you can visit their website.
To view three special interviews, watch the video report.
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