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Giving back to the Painesville, Ohio, community by helping student-athletes is an important part of the Classic Buick GMC mission, says owner Ralph Wilson.
Classic Buick GMC provided funding to the Thomas W. Harvey High School in Painesville to outfit four entire teams in custom premium uniforms. For Wilson, the contribution meant helping kids in the community where his children grew up.
“I do have two children who are grown now and they did play sports in high school,” he said. “Sports itself is a wonderful thing in high school. It’s great with all the distractions there are and all the bad things that kids can get involved in. Being involved in sports is good and takes up their time so they’re not doing things we’d rather they weren’t doing.”
Mick Mohner, athletic director for Thomas W. Harvey High School, said the contribution facilitated through DistrictWON will make a positive impact on the program.
“The partnership with DistrictWON and Classic Buick GMC has been very beneficial to Painesville City Athletics. The cost of running an athletic program is not cheap, so to receive four sets of uniforms in which our coaches designed, eases some of that financial burden,” Mohner said. “The four sets of new uniforms definitely had a positive impact and instilled more pride in our athletic programs.”
Furthermore, an additional financial contribution from Classic Buick GMC was utilized to purchase graphics software to increase the high school’s social media footprint and also create a new website dedicated to Red Raider Athletics, Mohner said.
“This partnership will resonate as the public starting point for increasing exposure of Red Raider Athletics within the community,” Mohner said. “Our athletic administration’s job is like an iceberg: 90 percent of the work we do is beneath the surface and is not visible to the public. Mr. Marwin Walling, the previous AD, did a fantastic job of taking care of the below-surface work to put us in a position to take advantage of great partnerships like this one.”
For Wilson, having a positive impact on the local community was the driving consideration when deciding to partner with Thomas W. Harvey High School.
“The schools need all the help we can give them,” he said. “If we can help them financially, that’s money that they can spend somewhere else. I think it’s a great cause and I applaud DistrictWON for bringing this to us.”
Rocky River, Ohio-based DistrictWON creates meaningful brand connections within local communities through marketing partnerships between businesses and high schools. For more information on how to reach high school students, parents and administrators in a way that truly makes a difference in the community, visit https://www.districtwon.com, https://www.facebook.com/districtwon, or follow https://twitter.com/districtwon on Twitter.