Rush for a Cause
PLEASE VISIT www.rushforacause.org and you can e-mail at rushforacause@yahoo.com.
Fall of 2009 at the end of junior year of my high school football season, after returning from playing Friday Night, I heard tragic news that a defensive back from a neighboring community was seriously injured during their game.
We played one another in a pre-season scrimmage. I have a friend who’s a football player at that school so I text him.
He confirmed that he was injured on the field and taken by ambulance. Word spread quickly.
People, myself included, couldn’t stop thinking about how sad we felt for this player, who we didn’t know, and the reality of it was that we were all thinking about how easily that could have been any one of us.
Days later, the condition of who we now have all learned to be Kory Wiita was not good.
We, as a football team, were told that Kory had suffered a vertebrae injury and is paralyzed.
The news was worse than I had anticipated or hoped. I thought about how scared he must be, how his family is hurting, and how their lives changed in a single moment.
A whole new world of hospitals, surgery, rehab, medical care, a wheelchair and expenses that have now consumed their day -to-day lives are what they are left with.
I felt strongly that I wanted to do something.
I thought about the situation for days, silently, on how wrong it was that the quality of life could be robbed so suddenly and undeserving and in return leave one so financially overwhelmed.
I wanted to fix it.
My parents came home from work one day and I was doing my homework at the kitchen table.
I told them that I had been thinking of Kory and that I thought of an idea that I wanted to do to help Kory and others like him.
I told them that I wanted to talk with my coach about next year’s football season and see if he would allow me to raise money to help Kory.
I felt that I could use my role as running back as a tool to raise money for a great cause. I told them “I have a name for it”. With the support of my family…
I established Rush for a Cause. Since my original idea, I decided to go big. With the help and support of my parents, I have established a non-profit, Rush for a Cause, that invites high school running backs to help me on a fundraising campaign to secure sponsors to donate money for EVERY YARD THEY RUSH during their high school football season.
A donation for the cause is welcome as a substitute of pledging for those not interested in participating in the EVERY YARD THEY RUSH concept.
I am hoping to expand my idea and take it national so that any high school in the country can join me in my efforts to have funds available to financially assist players who are severely injured on the football field or in any other high school sport today and in the future.
I would like to believe there is no need, but the reality is, which I’ve learned through this process, there are needs, many…will you help? I hope you can appreciate my good intentions and find it in your heart to contribute to my cause.
Thank you,
Matt Galland
Running Back/#22/Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School
www.rushforacause.org
