Fort Lee High School Academy of Finance and the Regional Chamber of Commerce held their annual 3 –on –3 Basketball Tournament on March 16 —raising funds for Academy programs and student internships.
Students are given the opportunity to apply to the Academy of Finance while they are in eighth or ninth grade. Following their application, if approved, students will begin the program during sophomore year —given the opportunity to enroll in Academy classes as electives. The academy requires that students fulfill an internship requirements prior to graduation.
“This fundraiser raises funds to pay for an internship, plus the chamber gives us a check for $1,000 which offsets our transportation costs for the academy students,” Linda Farrell said.
The Fort Lee Regional Chamber of Commerce is made up of members who own businesses within Fort Lee as well as other surrounding towns, including Leonia and Ridgefield Park. The organization promotes and connects local businesses.
“We have over 200 members and we work hard to help each other to make business good,” Chairman of the Community Relations Committee for the Fort Lee Chamber of Commerce Douglass Feitman said. “Fort Lee is really growing and we wanted to grow with it and help it in any way that we can.”
Students of the academy learn important career building techniques such as constructing resumes and cover letters, among other skills.
“This is a joint presentation with the Academy of Finance at Fort Lee High School which is a program that trains students to think about business careers,” Feitman said. “We, as the Fort Lee Regional Chamber of Commerce, jointly work with them and this is our third year now that we’ve done this basketball tournament.”
Since its premier event three years ago the basketball tournament has grown.
“It started out the first year we did it three years ago as a little tournament,” Feitman said. “We almost got 16 teams and now we have 23 teams this year. Everybody seems to be having fun. There are nice trophies that we are going to give out at the end.”
Current Academy of Finance students had the opportunity to network with business owners during the event.
“I’m a student with the Academy Of Finance and over the summer I took an internship with the Chamber of Commerce,” student Tiffany Pan said. “I worked with them filing and doing paper work. We also worked on the Iron Man competition that happened recently.”
Cliff Lee competed in the tournament sponsored by Boom Boom Chicken, a Fort Lee Business.
“I grew up playing basket ball on the Lower East Side in New York City, I guess I am pretty much getting back to playing a game that I love.” Lee said
The guest consisted of many attendants who are residents of the local community.
“I wanted to be the liaison between the Asian community, because, as you know, Fort Lee has about a 25 percent population of Korean Americans,” Kathy Lee said. “One of the difficulties that we are still facing is assimilation because of the language barrier. What you are seeing here and experiencing are first generation immigrants from Korea. Not like the second generation or the people who were born here, the language is still a big problem.”
The tournament displayed a combination of business, education and athletics.
“Our mission is to really support the community both civically and from a business perspective as well as getting our businesses involved with the community,” Fort Lee Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Margaret Maclay said. “What happens with an event like this is that all of these business sponsor and they get to interact with the kids and then they end up bringing them in to do an internship.”