When Mineola resident Mark Ungania started coaching two fall season baseball teams for boys seven to nine years old last summer, he wanted to teach them lessons about teamwork off the field as well.
“We thought it was a great opportunity to teach these kids just values – not just baseball,” Ungania said. “It’s more of a social atmosphere. The parents and the kids get along.”
Their first lesson came recently in the form of a drive to raise money to benefit juvenile cancer patients at Winthrop-University Hospital.
The boys went door to door in their neighborhoods over the course of a month, soliciting contributions from family and friends and also sat outside Saint Aidan Church before Sunday masses to collect donations.
The Redmen, who are members of the National Junior Baseball League, scored big, tallying 5,501 lollipops and over 334 boxes of Band Aids (more than 7,900 individual Band Aids).
“We thought it was good to do something in the community because the kids are all in the community,” Ungania said. “We want the kids to be proud to be part of something.”
The 24 players on the two new teams, dubbed the Redmen, are from disparate areas including Williston Park, New Hyde Park, Mineola, Albertson and Roslyn.
With parents and sponsors paying for uniforms, training and umpires, the National Junior Baseball League doesn’t operate with pre-season drafts, but keeps the same group of players together as they progress in age.
Ungania, who develops computer programs for Goldman Sachs in New York City, said he wanted to encourage the boys to bond both as teammates and friends since they weren’t all schoolmates and would be playing together for more than one season. He also wanted them to create ties to other kids as well – kids not as fortunate as they are, he said.
His wife, Michelle, suggested the project to assist cancer patients in Winthrop-University Hospital, a place where they both had been involved in charitable work before. So Ungania contacted Linda Sweeny, director at the Cancer Center for Kids at Winthrop to see what they could do to help the children receiving treatment there.
Sweeney told him the children at the center often ask for band aids with characters on them, like Spiderman or Barbie, instead of the plain brown ones the hospital supplies. The children also need lollipops during treatment to help them cope with nausea and dry mouth. So Sweeney suggested the boys conduct a Band Aid and lollipop drive for the center.
Three players representing the team, including Ungania’s son Nicholas, visited the hospital on Dec. 2 to drop them off the lollipops and Band Aids. They didn’t meet any of children they were helping, but they were welcomed by the staff members who gave them a tour of the facility.
“They asked a lot of questions about the children who were sick,” Ungania recalled.
He said he told them that the sick children had problems that needed to be fixed, and that although the band aids and lollipops wouldn’t cure them, they would make them happier.
Over the winter training season, as the Redmen club adds a 10-year-old team, their questions will focus on baseball again.
But with the spring, Ungania and fellow coach Ralph Borelli hope to have their players ready for a new season – and their next charitable play.
