Help a young basketball star finish a tournament

Hi, my name is Casey and I’m the single Mom of 4 kids. My oldest is Callye James, 15, and she’s my basketball star. Callye was given the opportunity in February to try out for an off-season Club Basketball Team to develop her knowledge and skills in the sport she loves the most. It means that she'll be exposed to different colleges that tend to make appearances at these tournaments. Unfortunately, Callye tried out without first working out the required financials. She was just so excited about the opportunity! In the back of her mind, she must’ve known that as a single Mom scraping by to support our family with no outside financial help, I wouldn’t be able to commit to this.

When she made the team, in the midst of her excitement and not wanting to disappoint her, I agreed to help if her father too committed to this. But, I definitely couldn’t do it on my own.

Unfortunately, it's now all on me to try to make this happen. I have applied for grants to help us with Callye’s fees, but have not received a response from any of them at this time. ☹ I've struggled for the last 4 months to make payments for Callye to have this experience and opportunity, but haven't been able to make much of a dent in owed fees.

As of yesterday, I was informed it’s crunch time. The total cost for the team was a little over $2,300, NOT including traveling expenses for Kentucky and Florida tournaments in July. Callye will no longer get to play if the remaining fees are not paid in full by July 1st. This means we can’t even book flights yet for the tournaments in Florida and Orlando, since we don't know if she will be able to continue.

These are extremely important tournaments and she has worked so hard juggling basketball, track, choir, and her regular curriculum in school as a freshman. She then practices for this 2nd team 3-4 days a week from 6:30-8:30 pm. And, the teams play in tournaments almost every weekend during the 5-6 month season, playing up to 2 games a day on the weekends. Callye has been more than dedicated, working so hard. It will break her heart if she doesn’t get to finish with her team. If we can raise the money for her to play, she and I will stay with my aunt for the KY tournaments. She lost her brother and my closest uncle in January to Cancer. It has been a tough year and it would also be precious time spent with my aunt and uncle.

If you can donate anything at all to help make this possible for Callye, we would be eternally grateful!