The Long Beach Century Club continued its mission of supporting amateur sports in the city with a special event last week, which took their commitment to a whole new level. The club has been making a large annual donation to all the city\u2019s schools for the last decade-plus, but never in the amount handed out at a special meeting held at LBCC on Tuesday\u2013Century Club president Mike Fillipow completed his goal of making a $100,000 donation to the school sports programs in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been building every year, and then a few years ago we saw this number and said, \u2018Can we do this down the road, can we do more and more fundraising?\u2019 and the answer is yes,\u201d said Fillipow.<\/p>\n
COVID-19 and other disruptions have led to Fillipow being in a unique position as the four-time club president over the last five years, part of what\u2019s allowed his vision to build over the last several years. His tenure is set to conclude at the end of June.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love doing it, it\u2019s a perfect fit for me being a former coach and being involved with the middle school cross country meet and then coaching high school,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re giving back to everybody\u2013it\u2019s been a great way to keep my foot in the door, but it\u2019s time for some fresh blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Century Club is a social club that\u2019s existed for 70 years in the city with the mission of supporting school and amateur athletics in Long Beach; they\u2019ve helped icons like Billie Jean King and Misty May-Treanor launch their careers, and 20 years ago stepped in to save the LBUSD Middle School Sports program when budget cuts threatened to shutter it.<\/p>\n
The donations last week included: $16,000 to Long Beach State for its scholarship fund, $8,000 to Long Beach City College for their student academic success program, $4,000 each to the city\u2019s high schools, and $2,000 each to the LBUSD middle school sports programs.<\/p>\n
A representative from each school came up to thank the Club for the donation and give the membership an idea of how it would be spent. Answers ranged from much-needed equipment and gear to mascot costumes, weight equipment, a year-end banquet for middle school athletes, and more.<\/p>\n
The answers highlighted the need at many local schools, several of which said they were just happy to get new uniforms, or new basketballs or volleyballs, for their student-athletes.<\/p>\n
Fillipow recalled other meaningful answers over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAvalon used the donation for when they missed their boat after a game and had to pay for a hotel every night,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody needs the money. But I\u2019ll tell you that my soft spot is the middle schools. They don\u2019t have the budget\u2013they sometimes don\u2019t have balls, or jerseys, and I think that\u2019s where our biggest impact is.\u201d<\/p>\n
The high schools\u2019 plans for the money included defraying travel expenses or paying for new track and field equipment, scoreboards, or for new Hudl film services which will cover all sports at Lakewood and Long Beach Poly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Long Beach Century Club continued its mission of supporting amateur sports in the city with a special…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-290241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}