Make Great Plays gives Westlake athletes a | College News
Young faces lit up with pleasure as award winners bounced to the rostrum. But it wasn’t only the elementary faculty recipients. The Westlake High college students who created the ceremony had been equally thrilled.
The teenagers are half of Make Great Plays, a grassroots group that gives elementary faculty college students a probability to dream, excel and imagine they belong in instructional echelons that once felt out of attain.
Dhuruv Sankararaman, a Westlake High junior and baseball participant, launched Make Great Plays almost 4 years in the past, beginning by gathering and donating sports activities gear to the 5 Title 1 faculties in the Conejo Valley Unified School District. (Title I public faculties obtain federal funding because they’ve a high share of college students from low-income households.)
The mission shortly broadened. In the last yr, Make Great Plays has performed backpack and provide drives that outfitted more than 100 college students and spent classroom time with college students to increase laptop literacy.
Maple Elementary in Newbury Park was one of the first faculties that Sankararaman and his crew helped.
“We picked up 100 backpacks full of supplies,” he said. “They made a huge difference to hand them out to everyone in need.”
‘Make Great Plays’ founder Dhuruv Sankararaman, left, and other Westlake High student-athletes give out awards at Maple Elementary in Newbury Park.
(Sai Krishna)
Next, they recognized college students who are particularly helpful to the large autistic population at Maple and acknowledged them at an awards meeting. The Make Great Plays employees created 5 awards, one of each going to college students in every grade: Inclusion Hero, Unity Champion, Global Ambassador, Hope Maker and Pathfinder.
“The kids are so excited to have high school students here to run the ceremony,” Maple principal Meghann O’Weger said. “Something feels different when the person giving the award is still a kid, but a bigger one. If adults came in and gave out the awards, it wouldn’t be the same as from peers.”
The 20 Make Great Plays members play soccer, baseball, lacrosse, tennis and volleyball at Westlake High. What started as a manner to embellish school entrance functions has turn out to be a gratifying life expertise for the teenagers as effectively as the elementary faculty college students.
Sankararaman plans to broaden Make Great Plays to faculties in Los Angeles County and rural India, where his dad and mom grew up.
“Some of the kids don’t have a stable home life and are behind in school,” Sankararaman said. “Spending time with them shifts their view a little bit. Many are incredibly smart. All the kids are very respectful. They listen to us as high schoolers and see us as role models.
“It’s cool to see faces light up when they realize how successful they can become, that they have the possibility of a great future.”
This is a daily look at the constructive happenings in high faculty sports activities. To submit any news, please e-mail eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.
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