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This weekend, Albert Leonard Middle School students Sam Rosenberg and Evan Phillips, both 12, raised more than $6,000 for children’s cancer research after organizing the tournament as part of their mitzvah project in celebration of their upcoming Bar Mitzvah.
Hundreds of families filled the Sports Underdome in Mount Vernon during the two-day tournament, where 15 teams comprised entirely of middle school students from the lower Hudson Valley, Greenwich and Manhattan squared off for top spot in the bracket - where divisions were named after cookies.
A team from Rye Neck, playing as Brady’s Bunch, a non-profit organization whose mission through lacrosse is to raise awareness of children’s cancer, won the Sugar Cookie bracket. The Greenwich Warriors sixth-grade team won the Chocolate Chip bracket and Pelham’s 7/8 team won Oatmeal Raisin.
All proceeds from the Be a Good Cookie Tournament are being donated to “Cookies for Kids Cancer,” a non-profit organization that raises funds and awareness for research into more treatable, less toxic treatments for childhood cancer. Phillips said that the pair’s goal was to raise $5,000, a benchmark they easily eclipsed.
“Cookies for Kids’ Cancer was a great fit for what we hoped to achieve,” he noted. “This is an organization helping to fund treatment for kids’ cancer and doing it with cookies. Originally, we had hoped to raise $5,000, but were able to surpass our goal. We think it may have been the cookie sales that pushed us over the top!
Rosenberg noted that the Be a Good Cookie Tournament was a no-brainer, that combined several things the partners enjoy while being able to benefit a worthy cause.
“We both love lacrosse and knew we wanted to host a tournament as our mitzvah project,” he said. “With pediatric cancer research receiving less than 5 percent of federal money earmarked for cancer research, we knew we could do something that would make a difference.”
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