Playground Build: Antawn teams with Simmons YMCA to build a playspace in Charlotte

A message from All-Star Playmaker, Antawn Jamison:

It's official! The Simmons YMCA in Charlotte has a new playground! I can honestly say that this has been one of the best builds that I’ve been a part of. We were fortunate to have some great weather and even better volunteers to help make the build go smoothly. The most shocking thing about this build was that the mulch pile wasn’t the hardest thing we had to tackle! Putting up one of the major playground frames was the hardest! One of the parts wasn’t quite welded right and wouldn’t fit into the part it was supposed to connect with, but with everyone pitching in, we got it done! Natalie, Lisa and everyone else from KaBOOM! did an excellent job as usual of running the build and making sure everyone was where they needed to be. The folks from Simmons were great to work with – I look forward to working with them on future projects.

Special thanks to Sashia, Candyce and Danielle from my Washington Wizards' Community Relations Department for coming all the way from D.C. to support me and help with the build. It felt great to see them out there sweating and working hard!

I also want to send special thanks out to my man Billy Phillips from Duke Energy who volunteered and provided around 70 volunteers for our build. They worked very hard and were instrumental in building our playground.

Thanks to all of the other volunteer groups as well as our wonderful sponsors who stepped up to the plate and made contributions. We could not have done it without you! Oh and I can’t forget to thank my family and friends who came out and worked hard alongside me all day long. My parents really worked hard and made me proud!

I'm not sure when my next build will be, but I’ll be sure to keep you posted!

Learn more about Antawn Jamison's work with KaBOOM!.

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