By DAVE O’SULLIVAN Publisher Members of the Atlantic City Boys & Girls Club are going to have a lot of fun this summer on the baseball and softball diamonds, thanks to some lacrosse players. Each year, several members of the Mainland Regional girls lacrosse team collect sports equipment as a way to honor and remember their friend, Aisling Cooke, who was killed in an auto accident a few days before what would have been the start of her freshman year, in 2014. Last year, around Aisling’s birthday (March 8), Molly O’Shea, Jules Cino and sisters Georgia and Lexi Schoen helped organize a drive to collect gently used soccer cleats. They ended up donating more than 100 pairs to the local recreation department. This March, the girls ran a drive to collect as much baseball and softball equipment that they could, and a few weeks ago they dropped off several boxes of bats, gloves, cleats and helmets to the Boys & Girls Club “We like to honor Aisling, especially around her birthday, and get her name out there to make sure people remember her, and doing stuff like this to make kids happy is a great way to do that,” O’Shea said. 
Several members of the Mainland Regional girls lacrosse team donated baseball and softball equipment to the Atlantic City Boys & Girls Club. Each year in March, the girls collect sports equipment to donate to local organizations in honor of their friend, Aisling Cooke, who was killed in an auto accident just before starting her high school career. (Glory Days Magazine photos/Dave O’Sullivan) O’Shea said it took several weeks for the girls to get all the donations together, and they used whatever means necessary to galvanize the Mainland community and get their fellow classmates to hunt down gently used baseball and softball equipment. “We collected equipment for two weeks at Seaview, Bel Haven and Mainland, and we got so much stuff. Last year, we did a collection of soccer cleats and donated them to the recreation department.” Cino said giving back to the community is a great way to remember Aisling, and it’s a tradition the girls hope to continue. “Just watching them, and the excitement on their faces, they are so happy. It’s so nice to watch them get so excited. We just love helping and doing things in Aisling’s memory. The community is so nice and so generous,” Cino said. “We announced it on the intercom (at school), we sent texts out, we used Twitter. Everybody loves to help, so the word spread pretty quickly.” Brian Little, director of the Boys & Girls Club, said he was floored at the sheer volume of equipment that was donated. He expected a few gloves, maybe a bat or two, when O’Shea’s mom, Donna, called and said they had some items to donate. “We love it. We appreciate it very much. It’s perfect timing, too, because we just got involved in a new baseball league here in Atlantic City. It will be us, the P.A.L., a couple teams out of Brigantine and Ventnor, and we’ll be playing those teams in the summer, so the timing is great. Any donations we get are great. I was shocked at how much stuff they brought. We couldn’t be happier about all the time and effort they put into helping us,” Little said. “Every time someone comes in with some kind of donation for our kids, just to make their lives better, they always get excited.” Little said he doesn’t want the efforts of the Mainland girls lacrosse players to go unnoticed. “I wish more people could see the efforts young people are making to give back to their communities and help kids who don’t have the same advantages they have,” he said. Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays [adsense]
Mainland girls lacrosse players give back to local Boys & Girls Club in honor of friend Aisling Cooke
