Former Woodbridge football standout Garrett Mozolic is undergoing cancer treatments where he lives in Hawaii, and seeking help to cover growing medical bills. (Source: GoFundMe donation site)
Every so often, a fundraiser will pop up on GoFundMe for some important cause, or someone who needs financial help after a personal setback.
It just so happens there are two going on now for a couple of Central Jersey high school athletes.
The first to come up was one for Bohdan Biekietov. He’s a junior at Montgomery who only arrived in this country in September with his sister and mother from Odesa, Ukraine. Bohdan is the starting big man on the Cougar basketball team that won the Central Jersey Group 4 title this year, and was named the Central Jersey Sports Radio Boys’ Basketball Player of the Year.
His father is back at home, working with the military, helping to shoot down Russian missles that rain down night after night on Ukraine. Limited in how much he can work, a GoFundMe for the Biekietov family started on March 14th aims to raise $10,000 for the family to adjust to life here in the U.S. It’s passed that amount with nearly 100 donations, and the new goal is $15,000.
TO DONATE TO THE BIEKIETOV FAMILY ON GOFUNDME, CLICK HERE
But a second fundraiser has been going on for even longer, this one for a former Woodbridge football player.
Garrett Mozolic played for the Barrons and then-head coach Brian Russo in the mid-2000s, graduating in 2007. He rushed for 2,459 yards in a three-year varsity career, with 23 touchdowns, and was a thousand-yard rusher his senior year, going for 1,126 yards and nine TDs.
Now 35 years old and living with his wife in Hawaii – where they first met – he’s been diagnosed with Stage 4 colorectal cancer that has spread to other organs, according to the GoFundMe description of a fundraiser that went live in January.
But Garrett is not just in a fight for his life; he’s also thinking about helping others at the same time. “Any unused donations will be going to St. Jude’s or directly to children of need,” he writes on the fundraiser site.
“My battle ahead is to beat the spread of cancer that has moved from my colon to my liver and lungs. Upon conquering the first battle, then moving on and eradicating the tumor in my colon. I’m taking a combined approach of treatments to attack this best as I can. My faith is in God and I know I’m in his hands. I’m mentally strong to face this head on, although my body is not physically as strong as it once was,” he added.
In a little over two months, the fundraiser has picked up nearly $31,000 with a goal of raising $40,000 for medical expenses.