On Saturday, February 3, the Parker boys and girls basketball teams volunteered at Chicago Furniture Bank, a nonprofit organization that provides “stability and comfort to Chicagoans that face poverty by allowing clients to handpick an entire home’s worth of furnishings for free.”
Sam Forst and Quinn Kass, the Student Athletic Council heads, organized the trip to Chicago Furniture Bank. Forst and Kass had “researched various organizations to volunteer at for a while” and after realizing that Girls Varsity coach, Reilly Bruce, worked at Chicago Furniture Bank, “we quickly realized it would be the perfect place to do a community engagement event with the two varsity teams,” Bruce said.
Reilly Bruce is the Assistant Coach of the Girls Basketball team. At the beginning of the winter basketball season, Kass inquired about Bruce’s full time job. Bruce said, “Early in the season Quinn Kass, senior Captain, was asking me about where I work during the day, and I started telling her about the Chicago Furniture Bank.” Bruce appreciated the connection of Parker to the CFB. , “The CFB and coaching are two important parts of my life so it was cool bringing them together,” Bruce said.
The reason behind the community engagement event with the two basketball teams was that, “we wanted to do something to bring together the boys and girls basketball programs to have more support and appreciation for one another,” Kass said.
The Boys Basketball team participated in community engagement last year, and Forst pushed to get both teams to volunteer this year. Similarly Forst hoped to further connect the boys and girls basketball teams by volunteering together. “It was really fun to bring both teams together and bond and it made the program stronger, we support the girls they support us,” Forst said.
While volunteering at Chicago Furniture Bank, the team packaged 51 boxes of kitchenware in two hours. Much care was taken in putting together the sets of utensils. Bruce said, “Everyone thoughtfully put together boxes, trying to make sets match to really provide the clients with the best box possible.” Forst said, “It was fulfilling to give back to the community. A lot of the time we are so focused on basketball so it was fun to go out and do something for the greater community.”
Although the team was off the court, Forst, Kass and Bruce agreed that bonding outside the sport will help the teamwork used in a basketball game. “The closer a team becomes off the court, that chemistry directly correlates to how teams play on the court, ”Bruce said. Kass enjoyed working with both the Girls and Boys teams during the trip. She said, “It was a lot of fun to work with my teammates as well as the boy’s team and to do something good for the community.”
In regards to future volunteer opportunities, they all hope it will become a Parker tradition, and not just with the basketball teams but all Parker sports teams. Kass said, “I hope the team continues the community service and it becomes a tradition for the boys and girls teams to do together.
