A Rhode Island high school football team pitches in to help dig their community out from the snow. This past weekend saw one of the heaviest snowstorms that Rhode Island has ever seen, with some parts of the state getting as much as 20 inches. As the storm dumped snow in the town of Middletown, John Wiest, co-captain of the Middletown High School football team, thought of his grandparents and how they wouldn’t be able to dig themselves out from the snow. So he reached out to his teammates with an idea: helping the community by shoveling snow for their neighbors.
Weist and the other captains from the team contacted the other players and asked their coach Matt Kestler to post a message on Facebook. It read: “Middletown Football players will be out in the community on Sunday shoveling out those that are in need (elderly, disabled). If you know of someone, feel free to message us the address.” The response was overwhelming.
Wiest and around 15 of his teammates set out Sunday with a long list of houses in need of some shoveling. “Everyone brought one shovel and we got snow blowers by the end of the day and it was really, really big,” he says. They were able to get to more than 30 homes. Wiest says they were glad to be able to support the community that does so much for them. “It was an awesome experience, and to be more than a football team and kind of reach out and help those in need was a really awesome thing to be able to do,” Wiest says.
Source: WPRI