Lady Vikings soccer team holding breast cancer fundraiser at final game

Oct 20, 2012

The Wareham Lady Vikings soccer team’s last game of the season, on Monday, Oct. 22, at 5 p.m., will double as a fundraiser to fight breast cancer.

The game will be followed by “Senior Night,” an event that honors the ladies who will be graduating this season.

Leading the charge are the team’s five captains.

“We wear pink for awareness, but this is the first time money has been involved,” said Co-Captain Megan Fitzgerald.

The team has already stepped up and donated $200 out of their coffer to get the ball rolling. The girls hope to match or surpass that figure on Monday.

“At the end of the game, before Senior Night begins, they’re going to see if they can match our donation,” explained Coach Cindy Sylvia.

The game will feature a “miracle minute” during which the girls will head into the stands with two halves of a soccer ball and try to fill them up.

While this is their first breast cancer fundraiser, the girls are not strangers to community service.  Many of them volunteer as coaches for Wareham Youth Soccer.

Fitzgerald said she volunteers with youth soccer because, “I want them to have something to look up to.”

Sylvia says the breast cancer event is a great way for the whole team to give back.

“We did a breast cancer game last year as an awareness campaign,” she said. “We have so many kids who volunteer with the youth program, but some can’t.”

Sylvia says most of the girls on the team have been affected by breast cancer in one way or another. Co-Captain Nicole Johnson noted, “My aunt had it twice, but she’s better now.”

Coach Sylvia says that, if it goes well this year, the fundraiser could become an annual event.

“If this is something that takes off, it’ll become part of the culture."