La Salle-Peru High student organizes St. Jude charity basketball match

After raising more than $1,000 for St. Jude Children’s Hospital during a Twitch stream in December, La Salle-Peru High School senior Lucas Barry didn’t stop there.

Encouraged by the success of his last endeavor and his drive to help others in need, Barry has now organized a charity basketball event scheduled noon Thursday, July 1, at 28th Street Park in Peru.

“It took a lot of work,” Barry said. “It took probably around three to four months to get it all together and especially getting all the players available.”

The event will be raising money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, as the public is encouraged to bring a chair and come by to support the great cause. Those who aren’t able to attend in-person are able to view the game on Barry’s channel at Twitch.tv/Commander_Lucaswastaken.

For Barry, the event came about after talking with his friend and settling on a charity basketball match.

“It all started off as a message to my friend because we were trying to organize an event to hold and I was like, ‘You know what, let’s just make it a event to raise money for charity,’ ” Barry said.

Barry worked hand-in-hand with the city of Peru for team benches and to ensure the event could happen as well as received help from Parkside School for a scoreboard.

Barry thanked the city of Peru and the officials at Parkside for their cooperation and help in bringing it together.

The two teams will play a best-of-three series with a first team to 21 points format. The teams will play five-on-five basketball with players available to come in via substitution.

The players have been split up into team Cbaby and team Commander with most players being local L-P students.

There will be a collection box located at the event for those who wish to donate to the cause as well as a link will be available via Barry’s Twitch stream during the event.

After the game, Barry will tally up the total from both donation options and display the total amount raised on a board sent over to him by St. Jude.

For Barry this is another opportunity to help children as he previously did with a charity stream for the same organization.

“Just helping kids, I’m just trying to raise anything to help the kids especially since they are going through such a hard time,” Barry said. “I’m just trying to do my best to raise anything to help the hospital get research done to help kids in the future and to help kids now.”

Team Cbaby will consist of Carson Davis, Trevon Hunter, Carlos Larios, Xavier Oden, Tristan Ybanez, Luke Buck, Austin Godwin, Brayden Strauch and Avery Urbanski.

Team Commander will consist of Lucas Barry, Ronnie Pelsynski, Ty Hrovat, Latrell Coulter, Jarrett Skinner, Het Patel, Marcellus Grey, Wes Ruppert and Former NIU Basketball player Nathan Scott.