By Megan Alderman-Person
The Greenwich High School YES (Youth Equipment Sharing) club is holding its second annual collection drive. After far exceeding its goal last year, the club has larger ambitions for this year’s two-week drive.
The YES Club, led by co-presidents Brian Fagella, Romano Orlando and Greg Goldstein, collects used sports equipment to help local underprivileged kids. The co-presidents, along with 30 other club members, will be collecting equipment until Feb. 13.
This year, the club has expanded its collection points from two locations to five. The drive will include Eastern, Central and Western Middle Schools, as well as the same places as last year, the YWCA of Greenwich and Greenwich High School.
“We are expanding, which is really exciting for us,” Goldstein said. “The community just seemed to come together around us, which is really nice.”
The YES club donated equipment to the Greenwich Boys & Girls Club, DOMUS, Bridgeport Youth Lacrosse and The New York Rangers Foundation. This year, they are expecting to donate to the same organizations and more, according to Goldstein.
The YES club’s goal last year was to 700 pieces of sports equipment. The club ended up collecting about 1,365, according to Orlando. This year, it hopes to raise that number even higher.
“In terms of numbers, my goal is to collect over 2,000 pieces of equipment,” Orlando said. “What that number really translates to is helping more kids, so that would be the main goal of mine.”
Last year, the YES club also donated equipment to help state Rep. Fred Camillo’s baseball drive for the Greenwich Boys & Girls Club. They plan to again this year.
“They did such a great job last year,” Camillo said. “I’ve never seen a group of high school kids in such a short period of time endeavor to do something and then get such a great response from the community.”
Every success does have its challenges, though. Orlando said that one of the most difficult parts of the planning process is working through all the steps and committees within the school and the town of Greenwich.
“There is constantly another person to be referred to, and there are always at least three steps to be taken before any true progress can be made,” Orlando said.
Goldstein and Fagella both said one of the most difficult aspects of the drive is collecting and organizing the equipment.
“Last year we collected over 1,300 pieces of equipment, so you could imagine the time it took to count, separate, and organize each piece of equipment by sport before we could donate it,” Fagella said.
The co-presidents said the drive would not have been possible without the rest of the YES club members and the help from the community.
“The dedication of our club members is something that shouldn’t go unmentioned, Fagella said. “For a group of kids that are so involved in other extracurriculars, the time they’ve spent to help out our club is honestly very impressive… the members are truly the backbone of our prosperity.”
This year, the Armory in Greenwich donated space to store the equipment during the drive. Goldstein said the YES club members are extremely grateful to HB Nitkin, a Greenwich-based real estate firm, for providing the storage space for free. Last year, Goldstein stored the equipment in a storage pod in his front yard.
“It is people like them that help make these endeavors possible,” Goldstein said.
Although the co-presidents are juniors this year and the club is mostly comprised of juniors, Goldstein said they hope to keep expanding the club and are helping to prepare the future presidents to run more successful sports equipment drives.
“We have a great group of five or six [freshmen] that really seem to be into it and we’re hoping to hand it off to them,” Goldstein said. “We think that’s going to work pretty well because just from seeing their hard work coming up to this drive, it’s definitely a great group of kids that I hope will take it over.”
Fagella said the club also hopes to expand its level of outreach. Although right now they are focusing on doing the best possible job in Greenwich, he said that as seniors, the three presidents will devote a lot of their time to working on the club’s expansion.
“Expanding the club is definitely a priority of ours, since there’s no better way to leave an impact on the community service system than having a national coalition,” Fagella said. “It’s obviously extremely difficult to achieve this, but we think that if we could expand the club to even just one other town, it’d eventually have enough momentum to catch on.”
In terms of measuring the success of both his personal drive and the YES club’s drive, Camillo quotes Vince Lombardi, who he says is the best football coach of all time, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” Camillo said he uses these words as his goal and as a model for success.
“If you shoot for the top, even if you miss it, you’re going to have a great number there,” Camillo said. “Whatever equipment we get donated is equipment that someone who doesn’t have any will get.”
For information, email ghsyouthequipmentsharing@gmail.com.
