Crazy Sports Night a fundraising success, despite abrupt ending

Friday night’s annual “Crazy Sports Night” fundraiser hosted by the Riverhead PTO Executive Council was cut short when Phillips Avenue Elementary School teacher Lonnie Hughes collapsed on the Riverhead High School gymnasium floor, (see prior coverage) but the popular annual event was a successful fundraiser for a good community cause even before the first whistle signaled the start of the games.

“Crazy Sports Night” is a competition among teams of teachers and staff at Riverhead’s public schools, who compete for the highest total points in games such as three-legged races and tug of war. The sold-out event raised more than $5,400 in ticket sales alone, PTO Executive Council treasurer Kristy Wilkinson said in an interview last week.

Wilkinson said the organization is donating $4,000 to sponsor the common room at Brendan House, a group home facility for traumatic brain injury survivors currently being built on Sound Avenue in Riverhead by New Beginnings Community Center.

New Beginnings has become a lifeline to many local families coping with traumatic brain injury.

“You don’t realize how many other people are going through things like this until you’re in it,” said Jeanette Fink, of Riverhead, whose son, Justin Walker, is a TBI survivor currently living in a Smithtown nursing home. Justin, now 18, was injured in a car accident in North Carolina last May.  See prior story.

“Brain injuries happen every nine seconds,” Fink said. “It’s something you never think about until it’s all you think about.”

Fink is hoping New Beginnings will be able to offer Justin a space in Brendan House, so she can bring him close to home.

“I travel 45-50 minutes back and forth to Smithtown every day,” said Fink, who works in the Suffolk County clerk’s office in Riverhead. Justin’s name is on a list for a place in the house, she said.

“New Beginnings is a wonderful place,” Fink said. “They do amazing stuff there.”

New Beginnings operates an outpatient facility in Medford, where TBI patients can receive multiple types of therapies and services under one roof, making it much easier for their caregivers. The alternative is transporting them to multiple locations, and the transportation itself is usually very difficult and complicated.

Another Riverhead teenaged TBI survivor, Michael Hubbard, is going to be one of the Brendan House’s first residents. Michael, 17, was severely burned when a gel firepot exploded in his face in May 2011. His third-degree burns over 40 percent of his body led to organ failure, and nine days after the accident, the boy went into cardiac arrest. He suffered significant brain damage as a result.

This year’s Crazy Sports Night, the third annual, is the second time organizers have identified the Brendan House as the event’s beneficiary. The first Crazy Sports Night, in 2012, raised money for the families of Michael Hubbard and Christopher Timpone, of Aquebogue, a young child who had been diagnosed with cancer several months prior.

“It’s turned out to be a lot of fun for the entire community,” Wilkinson said last week.

Hughes is recovering at Stony Brook University Hospital, where he is in good spirits, according to visitors. Fast-acting emergency medical technicians who were in the stands at Friday’s event saved the stricken teacher’s life. See story, “‘In the right place at the right time’: EMTs who saved Riverhead teacher’s life” 

RiverheadLOCAL photos by Emil Breitenbach Jr.
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