THE PLAYERS Championship made a transformative donation Tuesday, Jan. 21, to the Boys & Girls Club in St. Augustine.
As dozens of kids — and adults — looked on, Volunteer Chairman Tyler Oldenburg held up a giant check for $600,000 to be applied toward an all-new, 3,000-square-foot teen center next to the existing facility on West King Street.
“THE PLAYERS is very proud to support the Boys & Girls Club, which has been a very long-term partner of ours,” Oldenburg said.
Orville Dothage III, governance chair for the local club’s advisory board and leader of the teen center committee, put the total cost of the project at about $1 million. He said the donation was a total surprise.
“The donation by THE PLAYERS is going to allow us to complete this,” he said.
The club had been holding annual fundraisers to help it reach its goal, and it looked as though at least a few more would be needed — until this donation.
The club has been working toward its goal for about five years. The project is currently somewhere in the permitting stage.
The center will meet the needs of the local teen population. Currently, the club is only able to provide a 220-square-foot room for the 15-20 teens who use it. The club would like to expand that to 100-150 teens. The new facility would be patterned after a similar one in Jacksonville, which has a recording studio, dance studio, barbershop, robotics lab and more.
But, said Paul Martinez, president and CEO of Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida, the goal isn’t to compete with other clubs and youth centers.
“We’re competing against the streets,” he said.
Students between the ages of 6 and 18 arrive daily by bus after school. They are given hot meals and help with their homework, and then they go off to a variety of fun activities. The club also gives the youths an introduction to entrepreneurship, trade school, college and the military.
Miranda Thomas, 13, a student at Murray Middle School, has been going to the club daily for several years.
“I love this place!” she said. “This is a really fun place to be.”
She said she can’t wait to see the new facility.
“I am so excited to have all the fun activities in there,” she said. “Game room? That’s nice. “Barbershop? Wow. A lot of the teens love art, and they’re putting an art room in there. It sounds amazing!”
THE PLAYERS has partnered with the Boys & Girls Club since 2005. Regionally, the club has 59 locations and serves more than 6,000 young people across Alachua, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties.
“We serve, right here in Northeast Florida, more teenagers than anybody in the country,” said Martinez.
Oldenburg credited support from THE PLAYERS’ sponsors, spectators and volunteers to make such charitable giving possible.
“Giving back is really the overriding force behind everything we do at THE PLAYERS, and it’s allowed us to make a very tremendous impact in our community,” he said.
