NORTHBOROUGH – A Northborough mother and her daughter raised nearly $16,000 for soccer and enrichment classes for Boston Public Schools (BPS) students through the Boston Marathon last month.
Tracey and Lauren Cammarano gathered this money for Boston Scores, which provides free after-school programming where BPS students can play soccer throughout a given week. That includes practices and games against classmates in the Scores program at nearby fields.
“They have the ability to play a team sport with that community field that a lot of our suburban families get opportunities for,” Tracey said in a recent interview.
Students also get academic support with a focus that progresses from poetry and writing to entrepreneurship and budgeting, to life coaching and college-choice mentoring as the students age.
Mother, daughter plan marathon run
Lauren, who played soccer for 15 years including at the collegiate level at Taylor University, said that running the Boston Marathon had been a goal of hers for a long time. Lauren now lives in Pittsburgh and was excited to return to Boston for the race.
She said that the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of gyms previously disrupted her plans to find new exercise routines after she graduated from college and stopped playing collegiate soccer. As a result, she took up running.
Lauren was training around six days a week, doing running-based workouts for three to four days and cross-training with weight-lifting workouts for two to three days a week.
That helped prepare Lauren to eventually take on the famed Boston Marathon course.
‘[It was] very exciting for both of us to be there together’
When she learned about the marathon charity opportunity with Boston Scores, Lauren was not sure if her mother would want to run it as well.
But Tracey was glad to partake.
“I’ve wanted to do one marathon and only one marathon, and it was Boston because it is so historic of a marathon,” Tracey said. “To be on that course was truly an honor and very exciting for both of us to be there together.”
Outside of their physical training, Lauren and Tracey reached out on social media and to friends and family to encourage donations. They also held raffles and events to drum up support.
The two then ran on Marathon Monday as part of the Boston Scores team, which altogether raised around $138,000.
“It was really cool for me to come back to a city that I grew up in and to just be able to run this event that is such a huge deal,” Lauren Cammarano said. “But then also to be able to wait at the end for my mom and just to be able to give her a hug and tell her that I love her and that I was proud of her, I think is something that is irreplaceable.”
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