When working out is helping out

When practice was canceled last Wednesday, a few kids from the T-burg track and field team got a different type of workout in. A Facebook post from coach Bryce Desantis connected the youths to elderly people looking for help with snow removal.

“I wrote ‘Message me if you need someone, I can try to drum up some kids that are in town,’” Desantis said. “And then, I got swamped with people messaging me.”

Desantis said he sent out a group message to his team asking for volunteers. One of those who stepped up was junior Bryce Grove, a shot put thrower and sprinter.

After virtual learning ended for the day, Grove said he met up with a few friends in town. They walked around for a few hours shoveling out residents that had messaged Desantis, plus neighbors who flagged them down. Grove described how he always jumps at the chance to give back and almost always enjoys doing it.

“It felt really good, especially helping people that couldn’t do it themselves,” Grove said. “We’re 16- and 17-year-olds that could easily do it, and if we weren’t shoveling, we would have just been sitting inside. I was glad to be able to use my gift of strength to shovel snow in our community.”

Desantis described a long history of student-athletes giving back to the community, especially those in the track program. He credits Jack Reed and Larry Glanton, the coaches who were in charge when he started 25 years ago, for creating that legacy.

“It’s what Jack and Larry would have done,” Desantis said of recruiting his team to help out. “They were always encouraging kids to be good community members and making sure that they thought beyond themselves. That’s a tradition that the other coaches and I have tried to foster in the track program. We’re just trying to carry that culture through.”

Main Street resident David Breeden saw the Facebook post from Desantis and reached out. Breeden rents out one side of his home to Ray Miller, who uses a wheelchair, and his caregiver, Lori Gale. They needed to drive to a doctor’s appointment, but there was a lot of snow blocking them in. Breeden said the kids shoveled the wheelchair ramp and parking area for his tenant and then offered to help him, too.

“They were very polite and they must have been incredibly hard workers because it didn’t take them very long to do it,” Breeden said. “I would totally pay to have them come again.”

His tenant didn’t end up going to the doctor’s appointment but instead wound up in the emergency room with a fever. Gale said that Miller is currently getting antibiotics at the hospital and that she was very relieved to be able to get him there quickly and safely.

“I can’t always shovel what I need to,” Gale said. “It can take me a few days to shovel it by myself. I was definitely thankful for the kids coming and helping out. They went all the way around the car and made a path so the wheelchair could get into the vehicle. Bryce was fantastic, and I asked him if I could use him again. He gave me his number and said I could call him.”

Grove said he enjoyed talking with the residents he met that day and that it turned out to be a workout that left him and his friends sore.

He said that they’re already strategizing on how to improve their efforts when the next big snowstorm hits.

“None of us had ever really gone out and shoveled like that before,” Grove said. “We’ve all heard our parents talk about how they went around with shovels and knocked on people’s doors, but I didn’t think we’d ever get to do that. But we had a lot of fun. We’ll definitely do it again.”

Grove is a three-sport athlete and started running indoor track in eighth grade. He said that for him and many other kids, the ability to participate in athletics again — after almost a year without them — can only be described as “amazing.”

“I’m very tied to sports, and the four of us are very competitive,” Grove said of him and his shoveling buddies. “We’re all high-caliber athletes, you could say. To have a team again and compete, we all needed it. It’s hard to explain because before, I couldn’t imagine not having sports. Coming back to it was surreal. I didn’t think it was actually happening until we were at the first practice and we ran sprints, and I was like ‘Whoa.’ Before this, I thought I did sports for fun. Now, I see that I need sports — it’s my outlet.”

After a year of isolation and virtual learning, last week’s snow day didn’t spark the joy usually associated with a day off from school. But a few kids made the most out of the weather event and ended up connecting with people in an old-fashioned way — neighbors helping neighbors.

“It’s exactly what makes Trumansburg such a great place to live,” Breeden said. “We are a small enough village that you can walk to all the things you need to walk to, and when you do walk, you will inevitably run into someone you know. We all know each other and we all try to help each other out. This was a great example of that.”

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