Palmer Trinity senior Zachary Friedland is one of four co-chairs of the Miracle Games, a charity three-on-three basketball tournament.
The Miracle Games was originally started to raise money for the transplant program at Jackson Memorial Hospital. But the founders moved on to college and Friedland and his friends took over.
Last year, the money raised by the Miracle Games was donated to Achieve Miami. Friedland says he’s not sure which charity will benefit from the next tournament.
“We haven’t taken a vote yet. It wouldn’t be for a while because it happens toward the school year,” he says.
The four friends attend different schools. Friedland is a Palmer, one is at Coral Reef and two go to Palmetto High.
While previously, Friedland didn’t play in the games, he did know about them as did his friends and families.
But his love of basketball makes running the Miracle Games a natural. He plays varsity basketball at Palmer so he feels basketball is his thing.
“That’s why I got into it,” he says. “I’m using my passion to give back.”
Friedland has been a four-year varsity basketball on the Palmer team. He plays point guard on a team that won districts his sophomore year and been district runner since then.
He’s exploring the possibilities of playing basketball in college. If he can play, that will affect where he attends college since he would likely play at a Division III school.
“I’m weighing the divisions between big school, small school, medium school,” he says.
In college he wants to take something in sports management and business.
At school he’s also a member of the Diversity Council and Falcon Fury, a club that promotes Palmer sports.
“We try to get people to games,” he says.
From the time he was eight or nine, he went to a sleep-away sports camp in Maine, Camp Manitou. The summer of 2017, he participated in a service trip to Equator to deliver and distribute sports equipment to kids.
“We told the younger campers to bring clothing and equipment,” he says.
They collected the items and took them to Equator.
“That was the first year the camp did this,” he says. “We were the counselors in training.”
When they were there, the counselors-in-training organized a carnival in the local village for the children.
This was the first summer in nine years that he hasn’t gone to the camp.
Friedland volunteers at Achieve Miami, the literacy program that started out at Holmes Elementary in Liberty City.
“My friend introduced the program to me,” he says. “I started going with a group of four.”
The first couple of years he’d make the trek to Holmes and then switched to Goulds when the program expanded.
Now, there’s an Achieve Miami club at Palmer called BBLB which stands for Big Buddy, Little Buddy.
“Every other Saturday we go to Goulds,” he says.
This year, the program expanded to include an Achieve Miami summer camp at Goulds.
“I helped out with the art program,” he says.
He’s continued to volunteer with Achieve Miami because of the relationships he’s made with the children.
“In the summer program, I would have the same buddy,” he says. “It was cool to see the impact I was having on him.”
During basketball season, it’s hard for him to go as consistently as he’d like, especially when he’d have to go to Holmes. During the summer, he was able to go consistently and work with the same student day after day.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
