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Chance to Touch Lives 'Drives' Huron's Sesi
May 25, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Only a few times, collecting more than 300,000 cans and bottles was as gross as it might sound.
Of course there was some mold, and a few bags had dead mice in them. Once, a bag was filled with ants, and Katie Sesi and her family would find them crawling around their car for the next month.
Another time, a duck bit her.
But those are just some of the funnier memories that were more than worth the opportunity for Sesi to meet and help an untold number of people, beginning when she was 6 years old – truly a life’s work so far for the Ann Arbor Huron junior.
Sesi is a recipient of an MHSAA/Lake Trust Credit Union “Community Service Award” for her work raising $40,000 over the last decade for University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. Playing her violin at the Ann Arbor Art Fair annually beginning in elementary school, and then taking on a can drive that’s seen her canvass neighborhoods all over her city and surrounding area, Sesi has managed to raise $10,000 every two years since 2010.
She’s also met at least 50 of her donors over that decade and received in the neighborhood of 300 letters from people encouraging her work and asking how else they might help.
“Meeting new people is just a good experience. It’s really interesting to learn about other people’s lives,” Sesi said. “My favorite part was the personal interaction. When I started doing the can drives, I didn’t think I’d talk to a bunch of people and learn their life stories. But people leave me notes that say, ‘Hey, you should come talk to me.’ For me, just talking to people is really fun. The unexpected chance to meet more people has been very memorable.”
It’s also an incredible story, considering Sesi’s decision to start lending a hand as barely an elementary schooler.
She’s played the violin since she was 3, and recalled reading a newspaper article about two girls playing their violins at a similar outside event. She thought to herself, I should do the same. Her mother, Yvonne Sesi, challenged her to make it happen.
Katie then realized that being 6, she didn’t really need the money people would give her while passing by. So she began saving toward what would eventually become that first $10,000 donation.
At 9, with her mom at the wheel, Katie started her can drives. The first netted only $9. But she didn’t give up. At times she would work neighborhoods every weekend, leaving a flier at people’s houses explaining her mission and letting them know when she’d be back to collect.
Soon, the car was regularly full with the front seats moved up as far as possible to make room for the overflowing supply of returnables. She estimates she’s collected cans and bottles “several hundred” times.
Sesi’s first donation to C.S. Mott went toward building “The Treehouse” indoor playground, and subsequent donations have gone toward research of childhood cancers and the hospital’s Child and Family Life center, which provides support for patients and their families during treatment.
Yvonne is a doctor, and Katie is interested in becoming a pediatric oncologist (or going into business, or perhaps both). Helping children is especially close to her heart; one of her most memorable can drive interactions came with a family that had lost a son to lymphoma who had been treated at Mott; they invited her in to meet their newborn daughter they’d adopted after his death.
She’s choosing to donate half of her $1,000 award to U-M’s Chad Tough Fund, which directs funds to childhood cancer research in honor of Chad Carr, the grandson of retired Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr who died in November 2015 at age 5 after a fight with pediatric brain cancer. She’ll donate the other half of her award to the Ann Arbor Huron girls tennis team; she’s an all-state No. 1 singles player and team captain.
A regular in some neighborhoods, where people recognize her from past drives, Sesi said she’s learned a lot about perseverance and hard work – but again, is most inspired by the many people she’s met along the way.
“I knew early on that I wanted the money to go to children with cancer because it seemed to me completely unfair that kids should be denied a carefree and fun childhood,” Sesi wrote in her application for the award. “All together, I found that people have tremendous hearts and an unlimited capacity for supporting, helping and giving to others."
The Community Service Awards are sponsored by the Michigan High School Athletic Association and Lake Trust Credit Union to recognize student-athletes' efforts to improve the lives of others in their communities. In addition to the $1,000 award, the Lake Trust Foundation is awarding an additional $500 to each honoree, to be donated to a non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization of the awardee’s choice.
PHOTOS: (Top) Katie Sesi, next to her violin case, has played to raise money every summer since she was 6 at the Ann Arbor Art Fair. (Middle) Sesi has received hundreds of notes like this one thanking her for her efforts. (Photos courtesy of Katie Sesi.)
2017 Community Service Awards
Sunday: Colon "Yard Squad" - Read
Monday: Bailey Brown, Brighton - Read
Tuesday: Justice Ottinger, Newaygo - Read
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Assistant Director Mazzolini to Retire
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
November 23, 2015
Gina Mazzolini, a pioneering athlete, former high school and college coach, and one of the longest-serving current assistant directors for the Michigan High School Athletic Association, will retire from her post at the end of this school year, effective July 31, 2016.
Mazzolini has served the MHSAA since 1993 and is the administrator for girls volleyball, swimming and diving, alpine skiing and tennis. She also handles the sanctioning of out-of-state competitions and serves as the MHSAA’s point person on foreign exchange and international student issues.
After standout basketball and volleyball careers at St. Johns High School and Central Michigan University, Mazzolini taught and coached multiple sports during the 1979-80 school year at Ovid-Elsie High School. She then spent two years teaching and serving as an assistant volleyball coach at Michigan State University, where she also earned her master’s degree in physical education. Mazzolini then left to teach and serve as assistant volleyball coach and interim women’s Sports Information Director at the University of Texas.
In 1982, Mazzolini became an activities director with the University Interscholastic League, the service organization to high school activities in Texas. She became an assistant athletic director at the UIL in 1988, and five years later she returned to Michigan as a member of the MHSAA staff.
Mazzolini will receive a Citation from the National Federation of State High School Associations next summer and was the 2010 recipient of the MHSAA’s Women in Sports Leadership Award. She has served on NFHS rules committees for soccer, swimming and diving, and volleyball (chairing that sport’s rules committee from 2004-08). She also has served on NFHS advisory committees for athletic directors and sports medicine.
“Gina’s accomplishments from her days as a pioneer on the court to those as administrator have truly been local, statewide, national and global,” MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts said. “She has shaped the rules for the games in which our children compete and helped maintain not only a level playing field with her work with eligibility and foreign exchange rules, but a safe field with her national committee work in sports medicine.”
Mazzolini was named the first Female Athlete of the Year at St. Johns High School, graduating in 1974 after an accomplished career that included leading the Redwings to a District title in the first MHSAA Girls Basketball Tournament in 1973. She also played softball and ran track for her high school.
She went on to star in both basketball and volleyball at Central Michigan University; she graduated in 1978 as the leading scorer, rebounder and shot-blocker in CMU history and still ranks among the Chippewas’ leaders in multiple statistical categories – ninth in career field goal percentage (.496), tied for sixth in career rebounds (880), second in career rebounding average per game (10.5), fifth and sixth in season rebounding average per game (11.5 and 11.1) and tied for first for rebounds in one game (24). She was inducted into the CMU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992.
In addition to her work at the MHSAA, Mazzolini has provided a long list of contributions at the national level. Along with those mentioned above, she has served as the NFHS representative on the board for the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel, which identifies, promotes and supports international youth exchange programs, and has sat on several CSIET committees. She’s currently serving on the NFHS Annual Meeting Planning Committee.