Teachers, local celebrities square off to raise more than $4K for cancer patients and families

Teachers were victorious against local celebrities in an annual basketball faceoff at Hoover High School on Friday, but the real winner once again was a nonprofit aimed at helping families coping with cancer.

The La Crescenta-based Desi Geestman Foundation is named for a girl who lost her battle with neuroblastoma in 1999 when she was 12 years old.

This year, the annual fundraiser drew hundreds of spectators and collected $4,200 in donations, the most in the event’s seven-year run.

PHOTOS: Annual “Stars Shooting for Hope” charity basketball game

The teachers won 47-43 against a team made up of celebrities such as Sebu Simonian, one of the members of music at Capital Cities, NBC4 weatherman Anthony Yanez and UFC fighter Manny Gamburyan.

ABC news anchor Philip Palmer played on the teachers’ team.

For Kevin Witt, a physical-education teacher at Toll Middle School and a water polo and swim coach at Hoover High, his personal record of games won to lost is now 2-2.

“It was a lot of fun … [the event] only gets bigger and bigger,” he said.

Ileana Geestman, Desi’s mother, founded the nonprofit in 1999 and has since reached out to thousands of families and children affected by cancer by providing free gas cards, rent assistance, grocery cards and help paying bills.

“When they need you, they need you now,” Ileana Geestman said.

The foundation has also sent a family to Disney World.

In addition to holding its annual celebrity versus teacher basketball game, the foundation has offered emotional support throughout the year.

Ileana Geestman said she appreciates all of the volunteers who helped put together this year’s event, some of whom were students who helped with the first basketball match years ago.

“This community helped our family and then, in turn, it’s been passed onto the next generation,” she said. “Now, some of those kids who were involved when they were teenagers are now adults and they keep coming back to support the mission of the foundation.”