Lacrosse and Lions - A Community Effort

Lacrosse and Lions make great teammates!

A tradition for the Medfield Lions Club is to sell Christmas trees each year as their most lucrative fundraiser, but it goes without saying that this labor intensive event is made a bit easier with the assistance of the student/athletes on the Medfield High School Varsity Lacrosse Team and their Lacrosse Coach.

Hundreds of Christmas trees are loaded on a truck traveling from the Maine/Canadian border on Thanksgiving Day and arrive in Medfield late Thanksgiving night to be unloaded bright and early the next morning.

The task of unloading and carrying these trees (many times with chilly temperatures) is why having a great partnership between the lacrosse team youths and Lions Club members is a wonderful thing.

Over the years, the MHS Lacrosse Coach, John Isaf, has been extremely supportive of having his Varsity players help the Lions and he has been the head coach of MHS Lacrosse since 2012 and was an assistant coach before that since 2008. Isaf sees this as a great way for the players to be involved with the community and has always responded quickly and positively to the Lions Club request for help.

This year, for example, every aspect of the Lions Tree Sales had to be reworked and adjusted to adhere to the Covid-19 guidelines set forth by the Medfield Board of Health via the Mass.Gov restrictions. With this in mind, the Lions requested less players to help out in order to maintain social distancing and the plan was set, however, a last minute timing change was communicated to the Lions on Thanksgiving Day, but Coach Isaf and the players did not disappoint. Just the perfect number of players showed up to make it happen and provided the muscle to unload the trees in a safe manner.

One week after the trees were unloaded, Medfield Lions Club Queen Lion, Marjorie Cappucci, on behalf of the entire Club, presented Coach Isaf and the Captains, Rob Spaeth, Jake Grenon, Sam Hedges and Michael Vachon with a check for $250 to the "Friends of Medfield Lacrosse" as a gesture of thanks. The Lions chose to thank the players and the coach in a way that would benefit their program and show them how significant their help is to the Club.

After receiving this donation, Coach Isaf stated, "The "Friends of Medfield Lacrosse" is the 501c3 non-profit organization that is the Medfield HS lacrosse program booster club. Its purpose is to support the needs of the high school program through fundraising and off-season coordination of team development opportunities. The officers of this organization are the parents of each year's Captains. "Friends of Medfield Lacrosse" has been around as long as I've been a coach at MHS...so at least 13-14 years."

This partnership is a great show of collaboration and community service for all ages.

The Medfield Lions are a group of service-minded men and women who do volunteer work to support the local community and beyond. They do fundraising activities and always welcome new members. "We Serve" is the Lions Motto.