Teachers, coaches and administrators from the GUSD along with various celebrities will compete in Toll Middle School and Hoover High School’s second annual celebrity basketball game, where celebrities will play against teachers, coaches and administrators.
The game will be held on March 12 in the main gym at $5 per ticket, with all proceeds going to the Desi Geestman Foundation, a non-profit organization that benefits children with cancer.
Toll social science teacher Edgar Melik-Stepanyan, coordinator of the event, selected the Desi Geestman Foundation after learning that the students from Toll had “fallen in love with the foundation and its mission” during a picnic the foundation had put on two years earlier. The difference between this charity and other charities is that the money donated to them goes directly to the children’s families and not to research.
“This game is about kids helping kids with cancer in a desperate time of need, especially in this economy,” Melik-Stepanyan said.
Toll’s ASB president Audria Amirian had a chance to meet the founder of the Desi Geestman Foundation and states that the foundation is “truly phenomenal and unique” in that it helps so many families and children. The Founder, Ileana Geestman, lost her child to cancer in 1997, and started the foundation for families experiencing the loss of a child from cancer.
The idea of a celebrity basketball game came to Melik-Stepanyan in October of 2008 “as a wild idea that was going to take tons of time, effort, and dedication.” In the end, last year’s game was a huge success with numerous attendees.
After that game, Melik-Stepanyan, Hoover’s and Toll’s ASB, and Tara Lall, the public relations coordinator at the foundation, have all focused on learning to organize, publicize, work with celebrities and put on an overall better event for this year. Students from Mark Keppel, Toll, and Hoover are all welcome to attend the family-oriented event. Math and science teacher Matt Dalton and English teacher Jason Wong from Toll, and Azad Galustian and Henrik Sardarbegian, coaches at Hoover, will be just some of the teachers that have volunteered to play in the game.
“I’m so glad that the school is doing something that actually makes a difference and at the same time is enjoyable for the students,” Mariam Ghazaryan (’12) said.
Melik-Stepanyan and the two schools’ ASB have been in contact with numerous public relations agents in hopes of getting celebrities to attend. The celebrities will mostly be from daytime television, and the event-coordinators will be working until the day of the event to try to get as many as possible.
