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SOUTH BRUNSWICK: Team helps grow cancer awareness

A township youth hockey team went to great lengths this season to raise cancer awareness, by sporting “mustaches.”

By Jennifer M. Larkin, Special Writer
A township youth hockey team went to great lengths this season to raise cancer awareness, by sporting “mustaches.”
   The New Jersey Stars mites, a hockey team of 6-8 year olds, is raising awareness for cancer, according to team manager Amy Vadola.
   The teammates were involved in a campaign to help the community become aware of breast cancer throughout the month of October, according to Ms. Vadola.
   By making banners and flyers to place around the rink and wearing pink laces during the matches, the players and their mothers’ also made custom ice hockey collection cans for a “Round it up at the Rink/Pink in the Rink” fundraiser, Ms. Vadola said.
   What first started as a joke by one of the young players, adorning a mustache before a game, soon became a cause, and the entire team was wearing them, according to Ms. Vadola.
   According to Ms. Vadola, the team’s service was due to some parents, relatives, and friends of the kids who are cancer survivors.
   Raising close to $300, the team donated the money to The Breast Cancer Resource Center at the YWCA in Princeton, according to Ms. Vadola.
   In a Nov. 12 letter written to the NJ Stars Mites hockey team, YWCA Chief Executive Officer Judith Hutton and center Director Paula Flory expressed their gratitude on behalf of the non-profit organization.
   ”The YWCA Princeton’s Breast Cancer Resource Center is greatly appreciative of your Pink the Rink fundraiser which generated $248 for BCRC,” the letter reads. “We very much appreciated your donation and can assure you that many people will be helped by your efforts.”
   According to Ms. Vadola, the NJ Star mites team further participated in spreading cancer awareness during Mites on Ice after learning of MOvember, and the National Hockey League’s involvement with bringing awareness of men’s health issues, including the fight for men’s cancers during a N.Y. Islanders game at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
   She said next year they will start sooner to help raise donations toward men’s prostate cancer.