Youth football teams play bowl game to support local ministry

Next week, the fourth grade Red and Blue football teams of Vestavia Hills Youth Football will play each other for a good cause.

Following last year’s “Light Up the Night” game which provided support for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the league chose to partner with aTeam Ministries of Homewood, a non-profit organization that provides support to families battling childhood cancer, to put on the Go GOLD Vestavia Bowl for the fourth grade football teams.

In January 2009, aTeam founder Jan Thrower found out her son, Anderson, had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and realized other families battling similar illnesses also needed help.

“We just saw the need for support families had,” Thrower said.

Some families were driving three to four hours for treatment at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, then driving back home. The ministry began offering programs to support families, as well as housing in Homewood where families can stay rent free during treatment.

Anderson is now 11 years old and is in fifth grade at Vestavia Hills Elementary Central, and the Thrower's daughter, Avery, is in eighth grade at Pizitz Middle School. The ministry, which began in the family’s basement, now has employees and continues to grow, Thrower said.

“It’s certainly not something we thought we’d be doing, but it’s something God’s called us to do,” Thrower said.

The game is Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 7:15 p.m. at the Sicard Hollow Athletic Complex, and tickets are $5, of which $3 will go toward aTeam. Both fourth grade cheer squads will be cheering, and shirts are on sale now to wear on Monday Sept. 24. Students are encouraged to wear the shirts to school that day.

Both teams will wear neon gold socks and yellow wristbands for the game, while cheerleaders will wear sunflower corsages and yellow ribbons in their hair.