By Jessica Booth

When you think about being part of a fundraiser, how often do you think about going as far as shaving your head for the charity? There are not many people in the world who are willing to part with their hair in order to raise money for an organization, but members of the Hofstra Roller Hockey team are certainly not among those people. At their event on March 20 in Hofstra USA, the team collectively shaved their heads in front of a crowd in order to show solidarity with cancer victims and to raise money for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

The St. Baldrick’s Foundation gives the world’s largest volunteer-driven fundraising events for children with cancer and has raised over $50 million since their first event in 2000. The event allows volunteers to be actively involved in raising money while showing children with cancer how much other people care. Before the event, the volunteers find as many people as they can who will sponsor them by giving them donations. These donations go to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, which uses the money for research on children’s cancer, giving grants to doctors and giving financial backing to those children in need.

This is the second St. Baldrick’s event that has been at Hofstra. Both events were organized by Tom Kostiw, a senior elementary education major who came up with the idea last year when he was looking for a good reason to cut the 12 inches of hair he had grown. “My hair was ridiculously long. It was a mixture of, like, homeless and Jesus,” says Kostiw. “I figured people might give me money to get a haircut.” When he heard about a friend of his shaving his head for St. Baldrick’s, he was immediately inspired to do the same. With the help of his roller hockey team, Kostiw got his friends, family and fellow students to donate money. He ended up raising over $3,000.

“When I raised a lot of money and realized how much fun it was, I thought it would be fun to do it as a team,” says Kostiw. While the March 20 event was the second one for Kostiw, it was the first one that the roller hockey players did as a team, and it was even more successful than last year’s. Since Kostiw is in charge of publicity and community service for the team, he pitched the idea and found that a lot of the guys were enthusiastic about it.

“A couple of guys volunteered, and then more guys kept saying if that many guys were doing it, then they would do it,” says Kostiw. “Before we knew it, we had like 18 guys shaving their heads.” The team did a lot of publicizing in order to get the word out there, using sites like Facebook, handing fliers out around campus and relying on word of mouth. Each team member that agreed to shave their head asked family and friends for support and donations.

On the day of the event, the team was surprised to see that they had other volunteers who wanted to shave their heads for the cause. Some of these volunteers were other University students, and others were people who happened to live in the surrounding area and had seen the event on the St. Baldrick’s website. One volunteer was a University alumus from the seventies, and there were even a few younger boys there. All in all, there were about 25 people who shaved their heads.

“We didn’t think it would be that big of a thing, but we ended up having like 60 or 70 people show up at the event just to help out,” says Kostiw. “There were students who we never met who just happened to see a flier and wanted to see what was going on. It was really nice to see how many people cared.”

Other than using the donations they received, the team also sold bracelets, pins and t-shirts at the event, which brought in even more money. At the end of the day, they had raised about $4,700, which was very close to their goal of $5,000. Kostiw is fairly certain that they will be able to get to this goal within the next few weeks, since people usually continue to donate to the cause for up to two months after.

“Money is still coming in, so it’s still possible,” he says. “We came pretty close to our goal, and we’re pretty happy.”

Kostiw can’t stress enough how important the event was-and how much fun it was to be a part of. Before their heads were shaved, the guys had a hairdresser give them different funny haircuts for amusement for the crowd, such as Mohawks. “It’s a phenomenal cause,” says Kostiw. “Worldwide, 160,000 children are diagnosed with cancer each year, and it’s the leading cause of death for children in the U.S.”

The event was inspiring and left the team wanting to do more like it. Kostiw is enthusiastic about doing a second annual event, where he hopes to raise up to $10,000 this time. “Hopefully we can do it again, and hopefully it will be bigger,” says Kostiw. He hopes to get more sports teams involved next time. The alumnus that attended the event also gave the team some other ideas when he told Kostiw a story about how Hofstra students used to have a dance-a-thon to raise money for cancer. “The thought of trying to create something like that again is a definite possibility,” says Kostiw.

In the end, the team was thrilled to be a part of something that was fun, rewarding and helpful to those in need. “We raised almost $5,000-just think of a child that that money could help; it goes a long way,” says Kostiw. “And everyone had a lot of fun. If you see us, most of our team has our heads shaved now, and we all laugh about it. As soon as you leave the event, everyone’s going to ask you why you’re bald, and it makes you really proud to tell them why you’re bald… It’s a really good feeling.”