GMC News

High School Football Players Set a Fine Example

Recently I observed a group of young men and women doing the extraordinary. The GMC varsity football team and cheerleaders gathered together on Aug. 28 to conduct a carwash. This was a carwash intended to raise money to make a gift to one of their teachers, Major Stacie Goggans. You may remember reading several weeks ago of Stacie\’s experience with leukemia. Over eight years ago she was misdiagnosed with the disease and is so grateful that it was a misdiagnosis that she uses her gift of running to raise money for treatment of and research into it.

In October she will run in the San Francisco Half Marathon in honor of her friend Jim Coco (recently diagnosed with lymphoma) and to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America. To run the race, she needed to raise over $3,400. When this group of football players heard of Stacie\’s project, they floored her by volunteering to hold a carwash on Sept. 25. On Aug. 26 they discovered they would be unable to do it on that date and the only time they could do it was Aug. 28. They played ball on Friday night and won convincingly. They arrived at Hatcher Square Mall on Saturday morning and washed cars until that afternoon.

It is amazing that a group of young football players and cheerleaders could present such a selfless gift of sacrifice. In a letter to Major Gen. Peter Boylan, I commented that their gift to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America was over $800, but a value could not be placed on the gift they gave Stacie and their community. On your next visit to Davenport Field to watch the Dogs on Friday night, or when you read of their exploits on the field in this newspaper, consider that the group of young men on the field and the young women cheering them on are truly exceptional people who have shown their school and community how to love.

Scott Seagraves
Milledgeville