Westmoreland leaders hope to knock it out of the park with sporting goods donation events

Many former high school athletes have a box filled with trophies and medals from their glory days. Alongside may be piles of cleats, gloves, bats and sticks that they’ve long outgrown but saved for posterity.

Now these pieces of sporting equipment have a chance to see a field again with the next generation, thanks to the Westmoreland Kids In Need of Donations (KIND) Equipment Equity Project.

The group will be hosting two donation days to collect gently used sports equipment. The first is from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Mammoth Park, pavilion 13, in Mt. Pleasant Township.

David Woodbury and three group members founded Westmoreland KIND through the Westmoreland Chamber of Commerce Leadership Westmoreland program. During the nine-month course, participants are charged with creating a project group and hosting an event to benefit the community.

The group decided to focus on helping children and students in the county. A parent of children who play sports, Woodbury said he often has seen the cost of sporting equipment be a barrier for families trying to get their children into activities.

“The mission that we want to embody with our project is providing a little bit more equity for the youth across the county,” Woodbury said. “Some families have the ability to purchase sports equipment and memberships or dues so their children can play different sports, and some don’t.”

The group is asking that donations be made for football, baseball, softball, lacrosse, basketball, soccer, golf and hockey equipment. Organizations such as Boy Scout Troop 465 will be in charge of distributing the donations in their community outreach programs.

“We wanted to provide an opportunity for everyone within the county the ability to both give back and kind of do a little bit of spring cleaning,” Woodbury said. “We’re going to the community and saying ‘Hey, you come to us, and we’ll take it, whatever it is.’ ”

Even if pieces of donated equipment can no longer be used, Westmoreland KIND has partnered with Westmoreland Parks to dispose of it in donated Dumpsters.

“A secondary ambition of our group is to hopefully have this perpetuated into the future,” Woodbury said. “We didn’t create an organization. We’re just a group of like-minded leaders in the community that wanted to help out.”

Woodbury said he hopes that the event goes smoothly enough that Westmoreland Parks will want to continue it. The second donation event will be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Aug. 5 in the Hempfield Park Athletic Center.

“Sports has been a huge impact to my life and to my kids’ lives,” Woodbury said. “Being able to stay active, be a part of a team and learn new skills has been huge. I absolutely want to hopefully spur that on in the community as much as we can.”