Posted on Mon, Apr. 03, 2006

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Charity event

Dodge ball a big hit

Money goes to Home of Their Own

By STEVE MOCARSKY smocarsky@leader.net

YATESVILLE – About 100 teenagers converged on Pittston Area High School on Sunday, determined to nail students from rival schools in the head, torso or any available appendage, and avoid being hit themselves.

The students were participants in Junior Leadership’s “Dodge for Dollars 2006” dodge ball tournament, which the group organized to raise money for Home of Their Own – a non-profit that provides temporary housing for families of children undergoing cancer treatment.

This is the second year Junior Leadership sponsored a tournament for Home of Their Own.

“We heard about HOTO from last year’s (leadership) group, and we thought it was a worthwhile cause,” said Liz Wendolowski, a junior at Meyers High School who helped organize the tournament with about a dozen other project group members from Bishop O’Reilly, Greater Nanticoke Area, Hanover Area and Crestwood high schools and West Side Vo-Tech.

“It’s a smaller organization, so they don’t get as much funding as larger groups like Make-A-Wish. And it’s in Hershey, so it’s close to us,” added Bishop O’Reilly junior Katie Manbachi.

Blake Schomas, who attended Sunday’s tournament, founded Home of Their Own with his wife Mona in May 2001, four months after their 17-month-old daughter Libby lost her battle with acute myeloid leukemia.

The Schomases, of Mountain Top, spent most of Libby’s six-month course of treatment at Hershey Medical Center, where she received most of her treatments, or at a nearby Ronald McDonald House in Hershey.

The Schomases and other volunteers raised money and, in August 2002, had a small home built across the street from the medical center, just behind Ronald McDonald House.

Home of Their Own provides a sterile environment for children receiving treatment in preparation for or recovering from bone marrow transplants, but who aren’t confined to a hospital room. Parents and siblings can remain in the home for any length of time their family member receives treatment in the hospital.

“A bone marrow transplant is a very arduous, dangerous procedure that puts the patient at great risk because their immune system is completely eradicated, it’s destroyed in the process. … A common cold can be deadly to a bone-marrow patient … until the new bone marrow grows into a healthy immune system,” Schomas explained.

Schomas said 30 to 40 percent of the five to six families who have stayed at the home each year since it was built are from Luzerne or Lackawanna counties. The average stay is four to six weeks, but has ranged from a few days to four months. The home costs about $20,000 a year to operate and depends solely on donations and fund-raisers such as the tournament.

Each player on the 16 six-member teams paid $5 to enter the tournament, and a raffle and food sale raised more money. Organizers hoped to top last year’s proceeds of about $2,000, but a final tally was unavailable Sunday.

While one of Crestwood junior Vincent Pesce’s teammates said the thing he most likes about the game is “hitting people in the face,” Pesce said he enjoys “that rush you get,” and playing to support Home of Their Own “makes you feel better about yourself.”

“It’s good a sick kid gets to be with his family,” said Pittston Area junior Pat Cawley.