Karl-Anthony Towns, Sr. hosts 5K Run with UNCF in New Jersey

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Karl Towns

The weekend has been good to anyone with the name Karl Anthony Towns.

Yesterday, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Karl Anthony Towns, Jr., agreed to sign a 5-year extension with the T-Wolves.

Also yesterday, his father Karl Anthony Towns, Sr. hosted a huge 5K Walk/Run in support of Education yesterday at Brookdale Park in Bloomfield, New Jersey. The walk was in partnership with the United Negro College Fund (UNCF).

Towns, Sr., a pillar in Piscataway, New Jersey as an educator and entrepreneur, served as head coach at Piscataway Tech for 15 seasons. He guided the Raiders to a 2003 Central Jersey, Group 1 championship.

He was also an All-County player at Piscataway High School before graduating in 1980. Towns, Sr. would then become one of the nation’s leading rebounders during his collegiate career at Monmouth University.

Saturday’s 5K walk/run in partnership with UNCF, the nation’s largest private scholarship provider to minority group members brought residents from all parts of New York and New Jersey together for a good cause.

“The turnout was good, everybody seemed to understand the purpose,” Karl Towns, Sr. told me.

“Now I can get some rest! Next is to start raising money for the kids so maybe at the halfway mark of the school year, I can hand out some money for the kids who are trying to enroll in school, help them out with tuition. You know there’s a lot of people out there who can only go like this semester. So maybe I can reach out and give them a couple of extra dollars from what we raised here today. It’s all about the kids with me!”

UNCF is the nation’s largest private scholarship provider to minority group members.

Notables in attendance at Saturday’s 5K walk/run included NBA writer, Frank Isola, and Minnesota Timberwolves center, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jr., son of Karl, Sr.

“I’m glad to be here to support my dad,” Karl-Anthony Towns, Jr, also a Piscataway, New Jersey native, former star athlete at the University of Kentucky and St. Joseph’s High School of Metuchen alum told me yesterday.

Towns, Jr. serves as a board member of Team KAT and expressed being elated for everything to come together. “My parents did a marvelous job of getting us all together,” he said.

“It’s a big thing. The world, the way it is right now, there’s so many tragedies and travesties happening around the country. I think the first thing we can do, obviously, there’s a lot of things we’re arguing about, obviously, we’d like laws to be changed more. As human beings and as a group, we’re looking for the good in everything, let’s control what we can control and that’s get these kids an education.”

 

Each year, UNCF awards more than $100 million in scholarships to more than 10,000 students at more than 1,100 schools across the country, including our prestigious network of 37 HBCUs.

Jacqueline Cruz, wife of Karl Towns, Sr. and mother to Karl Towns, Jr. is a board member of the KAT Foundation. She related everything came together in spite of rain early Saturday morning. “It was an amazing experience,” she told me.

“We always wanted to do something positive with the United Negro College Fund and have a great walk like that, which is of course alerts everyone to health and fitness. It was just an amazing thing. We’re looking for bigger and better things.”

For information about the KAT Team Foundation, visit: www.katteam.org/aboutkatteam

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