Most athletes take their sports equipment very seriously.
Quarterbacks often insist on using their own personal football during games.
Baseball and softball players search high and low for just the right bat, and keep it safely tucked away in their own bat bags when not in use.
Swimmers cherish their own special goggles. Golfers even get as detailed as using certain tees.
The examples of sports equipment loyalties and superstitions are endless.
Senior Elle Ruchim gets it. She has played competitive softball since she was in fifth grade. She made the varsity softball team at Stevenson when she was just a freshman and has been a star outfielder and leadoff hitter ever since. She’s also played travel softball for years.
Ruchim says that she is blessed to have access to quality sports equipment, whenever and whatever she needs.
But she recently realized that there are plenty of athletes in the area who aren’t as fortunate, and, in fact, don’t have access to sports equipment at all.
“When I joined my club team, the Trevians, with teammates coming from all over Chicago, I saw firsthand how access to athletic opportunities was vastly unequal,” said the 17-year-old Ruchim, who lives in Buffalo Grove. “Playing softball requires equipment, practice facilities and organized funding which many schools in the city don’t have. It just opened my eyes that not everybody has this equipment.”
So Ruchim took action. And now, she heads up Diamond Donations, which started as a charitable organization to collect new and gently-used sports equipment for softball and baseball players but has quickly morphed into an organization that collects sports equipment for all athletes and sports.
“It (starting a charitable organization) was something I was thinking about all summer, and then at the beginning of the school year, I decided to start reaching out to my club coach and our athletic director, Ms. Betthauser, and they said that they could put bins out,” Ruchim said. “And then I asked family and friends, too.”
Already, just a couple of months in, Ruchim and Diamond Donations has collected more than $4,000 worth of donations. Ruchim then donates all of the sports equipment that she gets directly to The Sports Shed, a Chicago-based charitable organization that provides quality sports gear and resources for kids ages 8 to 18 to schools and organizations in the Chicago area that lack the funding to provide safe and successful sports programs.
Ruchim says that her immediate goal is to collect at least $10,000 worth of donations.
“But really, as much as we can get,” said Ruchim, who is the youngest of five children and comes from a baseball and softball family of former Stevenson players. Brothers Jason (36), Kyle (29) and Drew (19) all played baseball for the Patriots and Kyle went on to have a successful career at Northwestern. Meanwhile, sister Heather (34) preceded Elle in the softball program.
“The goal now is to get the Stevenson community involved and to get kids here involved to give them the opportunity to learn some of the lessons that I’ve learned,” said Ruchim, a math and science lover who has committed to play softball next year at MIT. “Doing something that might give more people the opportunity to be able to play sports feels really good.”
Ruchim says that her Diamond Donations bin will be stationed at the third-base dugout of the JV softball field starting today, and will remain there through Friday, November 5. Please drop off your new and gently-used sports equipment donations!