Gabrielle Lucivero

Guilford Wrestling Team Donates to Community for Every Pin During Season

If there’s anything that helps Keldon LaRose understand just how much the Guilford community needs the Guilford Food Bank, it’s when he looks around to see what isn’t on the shelves.

“There’s obviously a lot of people struggling with a lot of challenges,” said LaRose.

That’s why, at the start of his senior year at Guilford High School, LaRose had an idea to help.

“We were just thinking about how we could give back to the Guilford community, so we created Pinning Poverty.”

For every pin the Guilford High wrestling team got, they’d get a donation from a sponsor. They got 265 pins. $3500 for the food bank and the Women and Family Life Center.

"You know an all-male wrestling team support a women's organization was just really phenomenal to us,” said Meghan Scanlon, executive director of the Women and Family Life Center.

"In those tight matches where anything could go back and forth and a pin could really matter,” LaRose said they had another reason to fight. “There was always that extra motivation that you needed to do it for pinning poverty."

LaRose will graduate this spring, but his sister, Londyn, who manages the wrestling team is planning to keep Pinning Poverty going. Next year, she says, she wants to expand it to other schools in the area.

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