Last month, a fire destroyed an athletics storage shed housing gear for Tampa’s Howard W. Blake High School football team, but now The Gronk says he’s going to replace it all.
This afternoon, The Bucs’ new tight end Rob Gronkowski announced via Instagram that his youth foundation and his new NFL team are partnering to get the local football team back in the field.
“Hey everyone, last week we heard about an unfortunate incident in Tampa where a fire burned down a high school storage shed full of their team’s football equipment,” said The Gronk, while wearing a pair of Pit Vipers and speaking in his best WWE wrestler voice.
“Sadly they lost it all. Well, The Gronk Nation Youth Foundation and my new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, are all about youth reaching their full potential so we’re gonna do just that. To the Blake High School Yellow Jackets, you’re getting a brand new storage unit and new football equipment to replace everything that was lost courtesy of our foundation and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers foundation. So keep working hard this summer, stay active and stay healthy and my new teammates and I are looking forward to seeing you soon.”
The fire occurred on May 16, and head football coach Duane Thomas told the Tampa Bay Times it was a “total loss,” and that “a lot of that stuff can’t just be replaced.”
No details were released on exactly how much money/and or equipment is being donated. But according to the paper, the loss was estimated to be close to $15,000 at the time, and included most of the school’s game-day and practice equipment, like pylons, chains, practice equipment, field markers, pop-up dummies, pads, as well as a stencil used to recreate the school’s yellow jacket logo at center field on game-days.
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This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2020.