Facing the classroom for students at a Parkland, Florida high school is coming with flashbacks to death and gunfire.
The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are back to school and back on the field. The assistant coach of their football team was one of 17 people killed in the mass shooting on February 14.
Now six months later, Ottawa’s St. Matthew Tigers is one of the teams they’ll face in a three-day tournament in Atlanta, Georgia next week.
“It’s bigger than football. I would say it’s a humanitarian trip,” said Tigers coach Jean-Sorphia Guillaume.
Guillaume says this is about bringing together people who have a common goal and love for a game. While they will be competitors on the field, he said they are looking forward to companionship and letting the players from Florida know they’ve been thinking about them.
“We just have to show them love,” said Ottawa teen Nathan Lawler. “I can’t imagine that happening to our school and I feel so bad that it has happened to theirs.”
Fighting back tears, one parent calls it a trip of a lifetime.
“We’ve got a coach that cares for our kids and they had a coach that cared for their kids – and we just want to bring people together with football,” said mother Joy Meinzinger who plans to make the trip as well.
Meinzinger is also one of the parents who is working hard to solicit funds. Not all of the players on the 45-person roster can afford to go to the Freedom Bowl. It will be an 18-hour bus ride south of the border costing about $1100 per player. Subsidies are helping to bring the cost down to $800, but that is still beyond the financial means of some.
Donations are being accepted via the school’s website, or in person at the office on Bilberry Drive in the east end.
The team has also partnered with Boston Pizza on Innes road. Dining there on August 22 between 5pm and 8pm could help their cause.