Lending a Helping Hand: HTHS cross-country team provides free lawn services

The idea had been floating around in Matthew Antkowiak’s head for some time.

In the summer of 2019, Antkowiak earned a bit of money doing yard work for others. During that time, he realized that the people able to afford paying someone for such services weren’t the only ones in need.

“I was finding out that a lot of people can’t afford to pay for a regular service, and they can’t get out in the yard to do it themselves,” he said.

The thought nagged at him occasionally throughout last school year. When the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a screeching halt, Antkowiak had the excuse he needed to help start FLC, which stands for Free Lawn Care.

“I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t allowed to go to work. I wasn’t allowed to go to school,” he said. “The idea came back in my head when my neighbor asked for some help with moving some objects around.”

He wanted to find a way to help those in need. And he had a built-in group of friends to help him out.

Antkowiak is a member of the Hewitt-Trussville High School cross-country team, and several of his teammates joined him in the effort to make a difference. Eli Williamson, Eli Muncher, Alex Jones, Chris Mauldin, Sawyer Till, Wil Edwards, Kent Glover and Blake Bailey are among the team members who joined the cause.

It began with a Facebook post on the What’s Happening in Trussville page, making it known that the group was looking to help with outdoor tasks, from lawn mowing to weed eating to cleaning out gutters.

Within the first day, Antkowiak said they received a handful of calls. The ball never stopped rolling all summer.

“Eventually, we were just spreading by word of mouth,” he said. “Somebody had heard about us from somebody else, they’d call the number, we’d write them down and come out as soon as we could.”

The demand was significant all summer, as FLC averaged working on roughly 15 yards per week. The group would work five days out of the week — occasionally more, depending on the number of requests — and stayed busy.

“To be able to come out with our guys and have fun and help people, it’s really great to have a summer activity and make a difference in our community,” Glover said.

As word began to spread, people in the community began to take notice of what the group was doing and found ways to chip in. The majority of the equipment FLC took to each yard was either directly donated or purchased with the financial support of others.

The team had shirts made for their service organization, and Erech Brown was so impressed by what the boys were doing, he made customized protective face masks with Hewitt-Trussville and FLC logos and gave them to the group.

Saranne Humphrey is one of many homeowners positively affected by the group of high schoolers this summer. She found FLC on Facebook and assumed it was too good to be true. But she gave the group a call, and on a late July day, FLC showed up and took care of a variety of outdoor tasks for Humphrey. What normally takes her three days, FLC accomplished in just a few hours.

“It’s like a miracle,” she said.

The gratitude on people’s faces after a completed job is proof what the team is doing is worthwhile.

“It’s rewarding on its own. No money is needed. It’s really cool to see how appreciative they are that we come out and use our time to help them,” Edwards said.

With the new academic year arriving, the members of the cross-country team are back in school and competing at their sport. But what they did over the summer was not lost on their peers and authority figures.

“They said that it’s really great to have kids our age actually make a difference and get out there,” Glover said, “and not just say they’re going to do something, but actually do it.”