As a second-grader at the Sharon School, Timmy Reilly would constantly see a classmate on the playground during recess just sort of hanging out on his own. One day, Reilly decided to say hello.
“He just seemed like a really nice kid,” Reilly said. “He was always smiling and happy and I went over and introduced myself to him. I started talking to him. It was a good idea of mine.”
One of the best he ever had in his young life. The boy that Reilly met was a special needs student. A strong friendship formed from that day, and Reilly would invite him to his birthday parties and hang out with him whenever possible.
Reilly’s parents had no idea, at first.
“We didn’t know anything about it, and then we were hearing reports back from people at school that he developed a friendship with this boy,” said his dad, Joe Reilly. “We encouraged it. Timmy invited him to his birthday parties, and the kid is just a fantastic, nice kid and the family is a really great family. Timmy just ran with it himself.”
It was just another example of the kind of guy Reilly is. He’s 13 going on 30.
“He’s a special kid,” Joe said. “I think he’s the one that would always look out for an underdog. He’s the one that would look out for a kid who’s getting bullied. He’s the one who would stand up and say something. It’s not surprising he has an affection for kids who need help.”
The friendship eventually opened a new door in Reilly’s life. He volunteered for the Special Olympics, which led to his first fundraising endeavor.
Now an eighth-grader at Pond Road, Reilly set up and ran a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at the Sharon School on April 16 that netted $5,500 for Special Olympics.
“I don’t want to minimize the contributions he had to get this thing together, because he had an awful lot of help from a lot of folks,” Joe said. “But he was clearly the point man and this was his project and this was his thing.”
It was an amazing effort from an amazing young man, who was the first to offer a tip of the cap to his hometown.
“This made me realize that Robbinsville is a really good town to live in,” Reilly said. “It’s a bunch of good people.”
It takes one to know one, and he is certainly a good person.
After meeting his friend in second grade, Reilly’s journey to the 3-on-3 tournament started in earnest in sixth grade. Joe and his wife, Noreen, were looking for an activity to involve their son and explored the avenue of Special Olympics. They hooked up with Joanne Monaco, who runs the Special Olympics bowling program in Hamilton.
“Joanne was great,” Joe said. “She brought him in to start volunteering once a week for the bowling program from November through the end of March. Then it just steamrolled.”
Reilly became a staple at Hamilton Lanes, recording scores and doing whatever else needed to be done. He became such a presence, that he couldn’t afford to get behind schedule.
“He’s gotten to be good buddies with those guys and it’s pretty hilarious,” Joe said. “If he’s two minutes late they’ll be calling him saying ‘Are you coming to bowling?’ He’s typically a child of fewer words rather than more words. But he’ll be on the phone with one of those guys for 40 minutes. We’re laughing. We’re like ‘Where’s all the chattiness when we talk to him?’”
From bowling, he expanded to working for the Challenger Program, where he served as a player’s “buddy” during baseball games. He also got involved with Special Olympics at The College of New Jersey as a track and field coach, and was asked to march in with the athletes last summer.
Thus, what happened next was almost written in the stars. As part of a Genius Hour Project at Pond Road, Reilly and his classmates were asked to come up with something they were interested in for creativity. Reilly, who plays lacrosse and basketball for Pond Road, decided to blend two of his biggest interests—hoops and Special Olympics.
“I played in a 3-on-3 tournament at my beach house (in Margate) last summer and thought that would be a good thing to do,” Reilly said. “The one down there had a lot of success. It had a bunch of teams, so I thought it would be the same thing here.”
Reilly approached Joe and Noreen with the idea and their eyes popped out.
“We both said ‘This is going to be a ton of work,’” Joe said. “He said he wanted to do it anyway. We said ‘OK, this is your project, you run with it.’”
And run he did.
At first he had to write up a proposal and submit it to the late Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Steven Mayer, who quickly approved it. From there, he had to go through the red tape to secure gym space at the Sharon School. He received help from former Special Olympics employee Mary Beth Kowalski, who previously worked at Sharon.
“He got the gyms by himself, by going through the right channels and filling out the right forms,” Joe said. “Once he got the gyms, it became real.”
From there, Timmy kicked it in gear. He printed up flyers that Sharon Road Principal Janet Sinkewicz distributed and hung up. He had Pond Road Principal Paul Gizzo send out a mass email to the parents announcing the tournament.
Next came the always-arduous task of fundraising. Most eighth graders would try to pawn that off to a relative, but reilly put on his best face and had his parents drive him to every business in Robbinsville.
“He went in by himself to every one of those stores to ask for support,” Joe said. “It was always good seeing him when he came out with a happy face. But he also got an awful lot of learning experiences when businesses just said ‘No thank you.’”
He got several affirmatives, as VC Salon, Dolce Clemente, Villa Barone, Friendly’s DeLorenzo’s and Bagels & Cream all donated for a Chinese auction on tournament day.
As far as sponsors, many friends of the family stepped up big. Sponsorships came from Fusion and Players Services in Lawrenceville, Padsquad in New York City, Pearle Vision in East Windsor, Lighthouse Solutions in Philadelphia and Tricore Human Capital Management in Robbinsville. Reilly’s brother Colin, a member of the Robbinsville High Robotics Team FRC Team Nemesis 2590, got the team to donate some of their fundraising profits to the cause.
Finally, Steve Slaven of Slaven Law Firm in Hamilton, approached Reilly and said if he did not make his goal of $5,000, he would donate whatever was needed. Reilly made his goal and Slaven wrote out a check anyway.
With sponsors in hand, Reilly just needed players. That was hardly a problem, as nearly 120 Robbinsville youths between the third and eighth grades signed up. The tournament featured four divisions : 3rd/4th-grade boys, 5th/6th-grade boys, 7th/8th-grade boys and 3rd/6th-grade girls. Entry fee for each team was $60.
Each player received a T-shirt with the Special Olympics logo emblazoned across it, but there was even a story behind that.
“For Special Olympics, you’re not allowed to use their logo or fund raise for them unless you get their approval and they buy in,” Joe Reilly said. “They have to vet anything you put out that has their logo on it. Joanne Monaco actually helped to get their approval to use their logo on the T-shirts and flyers he designed.”
Other tasks included getting Special Olympic insurance for a fundraiser, establishing up a Facebook page and Instagram account promoting the event, and setting up the double elimination brackets for each division.
“He did pretty much all of it,” Joe said. “We would do things like drive a car to pick up refreshments.”
Reilly also had to create a volunteer staff, which is where the local residents really showed their true colors. Big brother Colin and little brother Patrick got their friends to assist with various details during the tournament, or to just play in it. Members of Project United helped with scorekeeping and concession stands. Countless parents also lent their time.
Tying it all together was the brains behind the operation.
“Mostly I was at Sharon School all day, making sure everything went smoothly,” Reilly said. “I would call teams out when it was their turn to play. I would fix the brackets when the games were over and I reffed a little at the end of the day. It was mostly call-your-own-fouls. The refs were there to make sure nothing got out of hand.”
Timmy also played for a team, which he said did pretty well, making it about halfway through the tournament.
The winners were the Sky Hookers (7th/8th), Team SAP (5th/6th), the Cookie Monsters (3rd/4th) and the Warriors (girls).
As things unfolded, it became obvious the event was a massive success. But the mastermind had to enjoy it a day later.
“I was really happy with what I’d done,” Reilly said. “But it was also very stressful during the day. I didn’t really have much time to think about that. It definitely went a lot better than I had hoped.”
The event was such a success that Reilly is already planning on doing it next year. And while he deserves rave reviews for what he accomplished, his dad feels the entire township should take a bow.
“This town is just fantastic,” Joe said. “For all the work he did, it wouldn’t have worked unless he had 120 kids from the schools here say ‘Yeah we’ll sign up and we’ll give up our Saturday for you,’ The whole thing wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t have the support of the town. I think people even knew that day they were all part of doing something that was really pretty special here.”
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