Kenowa Hills High School students and district residents combined forces recently to raise more than $4,000 for community causes.
The eighth annual Robert Kozminski Memorial Basketball Games in late January raised more than $2,000, featuring two scrimmages involving local police officers, sheriff’s deputies and KHHS teachers. The event honors Kozminski, a Kenowa Hills graduate and Grand Rapids Police officer who was killed in the line of duty in 2007. Proceeds went to the Jacob Freybler Scholarship Fund, named after a KHHS student who was killed last summer in a car accident after texting while driving, police said.
A week after the Kozminski Memorial, students and supporters raised $2,435 for cancer research during the boys’ and girls’ basketball games. Titled “Purple is the New Black,” the event invited sponsors to buy player jerseys bearing the names of loved ones affected by cancer. Half the proceeds of the jerseys, as well as the sale of purple T-shirts, went to the Van Andel Institute cancer research center. The national anthem that night was sung by Sam Reed, whose father, Rex Reed, was a Kenowa Hills teacher who died of cancer.
