Matthew Mangine's 18th birthday helping fund change for student athletes
CINCINNATI (WKRC) - A Northern Kentucky family has raised awareness and money to help hundreds of local athletes after their son, Matt Magnine, Jr., collapsed on a soccer field last June.
The Mangines now celebrate another milestone.
For many, Octobers are about Friday night lights in cool weather, falling leaves and picking pumpkins.
For the family of the former St. Henry high school soccer, it's about celebrating his life.
“Hello my name is Matt Mangine and my wife, Kim, and I lost our son on June 16th of 2020. I can tell you it was one of the hardest days of my life.”
October 13 is Matthew Mangine Jr.'s birthday. It would have been his 18th.
In the year and a half since Matt's collapse, his family set up the Matthew Mangine Jr. "One Shot" Foundation.
Since March of 2021, it's provided eight Cincinnati-area high schools with grants to add life-saving equipment, like defibrillators or AEDs to their sidelines.
“This isn’t about the schools – this is about the athletic facilities,” Mangine said. “People know that the schools have to have AEDs but we’re working on the athletic facilities, which are kind of a secondary situations of the schools have those needs met.”
Athletic departments like Holmes, Taylor, Purcell Marian and Fayetteville-Perry, discovered their need for more AEDs after seeing a previous Local 12 story on Mangine Jr.
“Well, the reason we first started looking at the AED is mainly through the story that you had posted,” said Angela Murphy, Fayetteville-Perry’s athletic director.
Now the Matt Mangine Jr. Foundation just handed out its largest grant: to Cincinnati Public Schools, which has 13 high schools with athletic programs.
“Biggest grant to date dollar value-wise,” Mangine said. “They also had the biggest need.”
And they want to keep going because the need is there. The foundation is working to approve grants for five more high schools.
“Some of these other schools have reached out to us for other reasons and just finding out about us, which is awesome,” Mangine said. “That’s what we wanted to do.”
But in order to help these high schools and potentially save lives, the Mangines need help from the community.
The family created a fundraising event for Matt's birthday: an $18 donation in honor of their son's 18th birthday to help more athletes across the Tri-State.
“We’ve raised a lot of money this year and it’s just scratching the surface of what the needs are in the community and it kind of blows me away a little bit,” Mangine said.
Donations for Matt’s 18th will help fund change in the hopes no other athletes will miss their birthdays. You can visit the foundation HERE.
