During the month of September, Los Angeles Football Club partnered with Kaiser Permanente and the Austen Everett Foundation to bring awareness and highlight the warriors that have fought or are currently battling childhood cancer. The Black and Gold focused on several events to bring greater awareness to the disease, culminating in the Club’s annual Kick Childhood Cancer (KCC) match that took place on Saturday September 21 at Banc of California Stadium against Toronto FC.
Events throughout the month included a hospital visit on September 5, where Tyler Miller, Tom Penn and members of the LAFC staff visited children at Kaiser-Permanente’s pediatric oncology unit. Tyler and guests helped make slime and design pennants with the visit ending on a patient, 11-year-old Justin Petre, ringing the “end of treatment” bell and being invited to be the honorary Falconer at the September 21 match. Other events included an LAFC Performance Center visit by cancer patient Caleb Jones-Moreno, who met with players and watched training, and was then invited to be an honorary starter for the September 21 match.
The Kick Childhood Cancer match on September 21 was highlighted by the Club working with Josh Padilla, a cancer patient who designed limited edition KCC scarves and t-shirts that were sold at LAFC HQ during the match with a portion of the proceeds going to the Austen Everett Foundation.
Also on Sept. 21, 11-year-old Justin Petre, who just finished treatment at Kaiser-Permanente’s pediatric oncology unit served as honorary falconer, and cancer patient Caleb Jones-Moreno as an honorary starter. In addition, the match featured a number of different activations including a gold adidas Nativo Questra 2019 Official Match Ball, gold corner flags, gold goal nets and players donned special edition KCC training tops and gold-ribbon jersey patches.
