Whether the East Hampton High School varsity and junior varsity girls volleyball teams won or lost matches with Amityville here Tuesday mattered little in light of the news that the players coached by Abigail Downs and Jacqueline Bates had raised around $15,000 at their Dig Pink game for the Side-Out Foundation, a national organization that provides breast cancer treatment for women who can’t afford it and also finances breast cancer research.
“That’s triple what we raised last year,” said Bates, who teaches family and consumer science at the East Hampton Middle School and coaches that school’s girls volleyball team as well. The donations, she said, had come “from friends, family, teachers, organizations. . . . The kids did the fund-raising, they’ve done great, they’ve been awesome.”
“No,” she said in answer to a question, “there’s no prize for the school that raises the most money — it’s just the satisfaction of knowing what the kids and community have accomplished.”
That October was Breast Cancer Awareness month made the players’ fund-raising effort all the more notable, Bates said, adding that most of those playing that day were doing so in honor of family members who either had died of the disease or who were at the moment undergoing treatment.