Sayville Girls Soccer Team Brings Awareness to Multiple Sclerosis

In an Extraordinary Move, Sayville Girls Soccer Team Brings Awareness to Multiple Sclerosis

October 2019

In 2014, Assistant Sayville Girls Varsity Soccer Coach Bob Holmes was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. While he is the first to admit that with the medical care from his neurologist, Dr. Mark Gudesblatt and the staff at South Shore Neurologic, he remains “able to be active and coach,” the disease is a challenging one.

And his team knows it.

So this year, during October, a month normally linked with Cancer Awareness, the Sayville Girls Soccer made their awareness event personal. They switched up their play and decided to focus on Multiple Sclerosis. And they did it for their Assistant Coach Bob Holmes.

“The team typically does a Kicks-For-Cancer event in October,” Bob Holmes explained. “This year they felt passionate about helping me and my community of MS fighters. They named the event Ballin for Bob to honor me and designed MS orange socks and shirts for the event.” 

On October 14, the Ballin for Bob event, which Newsday covered, drew a large crowd and raised over $1500 from the local community. Later, the proceeds were donated to the MS society in Coach Bob’s name.

Ballin for Bob—the Multiple-Sclerosis Awareness event—was generated by the girls themselves and spearheaded by the Girls Varsity Soccer Team Leaders Emma Famularo, Elizabeth Argenziano, Bailey Lillis, along with Head Coach John Burke. The discipline and heart it took for “a team to come together to do this” impressed everyone, but especially Coach Bob, “This was very touching” and “an extremely great thing for high school athletes to do that helped the MS community and raised awareness.”

October 2019

In 2014, Assistant Sayville Girls Varsity Soccer Coach Bob Holmes was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. While he is the first to admit that with the medical care from his neurologist, Dr. Mark Gudesblatt and the staff at South Shore Neurologic, he remains “able to be active and coach,” the disease is a challenging one.

And his team knows it.

So this year, during October, a month normally linked with Cancer Awareness, the Sayville Girls Soccer made their awareness event personal. They switched up their play and decided to focus on Multiple Sclerosis. And they did it for their Assistant Coach Bob Holmes.

“The team typically does a Kicks-For-Cancer event in October,” Bob Holmes explained. “This year they felt passionate about helping me and my community of MS fighters. They named the event Ballin for Bob to honor me and designed MS orange socks and shirts for the event.” 

On October 14, the Ballin for Bob event, which Newsday covered, drew a large crowd and raised over $1500 from the local community. Later, the proceeds were donated to the MS society in Coach Bob’s name.

Ballin for Bob—the Multiple-Sclerosis Awareness event—was generated by the girls themselves and spearheaded by the Girls Varsity Soccer Team Leaders Emma Famularo, Elizabeth Argenziano, Bailey Lillis, along with Head Coach John Burke. The discipline and heart it took for “a team to come together to do this” impressed everyone, but especially Coach Bob, “This was very touching” and “an extremely great thing for high school athletes to do that helped the MS community and raised awareness.”