Carlmont’s EQUIPT Club is impacting the local community with its first-ever sports equipment drive happening throughout the month of January.
The club, founded by Jayden Lee and Mateo Golomb, aims to provide sports gear to underprivileged youth, allowing students to participate in sports regardless of financial barriers.
“Many kids do not have the right equipment to exercise, so what we want to do is empower them to live their lives to a greater ability,” Golomb said. “Sports can help give youth a productive outlet and opportunities to build life-long memories.”
The EQUIPT Club is new this year, and it is the first time this drive has been run at Carlmont. Lee and Golomb both play soccer for Belmont United Soccer Club and wanted to help kids experience the same benefits they got from playing sports.
“I started to think about how sports impacted my life and how it gives people the ability to connect with others and has taught me life skills that I think have really shaped me as a person,” Lee said.
Any contributions to the drive are greatly appreciated by the club and can significantly impact the community.
“All items donated are a success. That’s one more piece of equipment going to kids who need it that wasn’t there before. No matter how much we receive, the people receiving it are going to be extremely grateful,” Golomb said.
The sports equipment drive has bins in the senior parking lot, ASB room, and swimming pool roundabout. They accept many types of gear in various sports like soccer, field hockey, volleyball, basketball, baseball, and more.
The EQUIPT club is a branch of the charity foundation Play for the Future and is working with them to make the drive happen.
“We decided that partnering with Play for the Future would be beneficial because they are a bigger organization. The drive we are doing is for the same cause, and we have worked with them at other events as well,” Lee said.
After all of the supplies have been collected, they will either be donated to an organization that takes gently used gear or added to the Play for the Future collection to be distributed at future events they host.
“We’re going to gather the gear and coordinate with Play for the Future on donation locations that are accepting right now and would accept the used equipment,” Golomb said.
This drive allows students and the community to touch the lives of many kids who can significantly benefit from this gear.
“Everything that there’s a drive for, there’s a need for, and I certainly believe that this is a great cause,” said Jim Kelly, the ASB teacher who helped coordinate the bins on campus.
The EQUIPT club plans to continue doing its drive in future years.
“I think we would definitely want to do it next year, and hopefully, after that, we have someone that we can pass it down to,” Lee said.
This endeavor has created challenges for the club, but their passion for the subject has allowed them to overcome obstacles.
“Knowing this is something really important and bigger than ourselves makes it really special,” Lee said.
