Brothers Aidan and Shane Gross launched a charity basketball game for their bar mitzvah project. They want to make it an annual event.
By Jashvina Shah
Hopewell Helping Hoops, an all-star basketball charity game, had an audience of several hundred. But the tournament, which featured elite talent from Hopewell Valley and the surrounding neighborhoods, originally started as Aidan and Shane Gross’ Bar Mitzvah project.
“They decided that they wanted to be really about the community and engaging everyone,” their mother, Paula Gross, said. “It was instigated by something that they needed to do for themselves but they took it well beyond that and made it something totally different.”
After deciding on a charity basketball game as their community service project, Aidan and Shane chose to partner with the Boys and Girls Club of Mercer Country.
“We thought that the club would be a really good charity to do this for because it gives kids the opportunity and a place to go with a safe environment for them to do educational and physical activity,” Aidan said. “And kids my age, kids older, kids younger can really enjoy themselves there. [They can] do fun things that they maybe wouldn’t get to do at home or anywhere else.”
The brothers called the Boys and Girls Club and said they would do all the work from getting players and coaches to securing a venue.
“They were really involved in the nitty gritty of it,” Emily Gee of the Boys and Girls Club said. “A lot of times it’s calls to volunteer with our kids or something like that. This was really just, ‘We’re going to put this all together and it’s all for you.’ That was a really nice gesture.”
After coming up with the event idea, the brothers approached Hopewell superintendent Tom Smith. Smith not only allowed Shane and Aidan usage of the school gym, but also lent chairs and help from the custodians.
“In the beginning it seemed like a lot of hard work and I was a little bit flustered about this whole thing,” Aidan said. “It’s a big project for my Bar Mitzvah, but in the end it’s all worth it, seeing the smiles on people’s faces and the donations at the game.”
Originally the charity game was going to be a high school game, with teams of different grade levels from different schools playing each other. But Aidan and Shane chose a wider grade range to keep the competition fun. Reggie Coleman, the executive director of the club’s Trenton operations, was thrilled.
“They just wanted to have our blessing to be able to use our name in soliciting support and we gave them that,” Coleman said. “The event kind of fell in our lap. I think Paula, just being out in the community heard about the club expanding into Spruce Street over into the Lawrence and Ewing communities. From what I’m told, she saw our newsletter and they thought it would be a great idea to do a fundraiser for the club.”
Coleman said the proceeds will go to the Boys and Girls Club’s general operations, which will help provide scholarships for those who can’t afford to pay for membership. Each year the group raises over $3 million to run the Trenton facility, Coleman said.
The event was held at the Hopewell Valley Central High School gym and more than $3,000 was raised for the Boys and Girls Club. It featured the Hopewell Valley area’s elite basketball players from 5th to 10th grade.
“A lot of people in town like watching basketball,” Aidan said. “We thought we could donate a lot of money to charity by having people gather to watch.”
To spread the word, Aiden and Shane posted flyers and collected money outside of the Pennington Market the week of the tournament.
“The boys really have worked hard, especially seven hours at the market in 102 degree heat,” Paula said. “It just was unbelievable to see the response from the Hopewell Valley residents to their request to assisting an organization like the Boys and Girls Club.”
Aidan and Shane also received support from several local organizations including Rita’s Water Ice, which donated food to the event.
“It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to make this happen,” Shane said. “I learned that we have a very charitable community and that they’re able to donate their time and money to the Boys and Girls Club and to our all-star basketball tournament.”
They plan on making the charity basketball game an annual event.
“I think from the response we’ve had so far, people seem to want to do this again,” Paula said. “People are jumping on board to help and there’s talk that maybe next year we’ll have girls in it too ,so we’re very pleased that the community really wants to create a connection with another community.”
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