Don Di Camillo of Garden City was the eighth runner overall out of 907 finishers in the 9th annual Wantagh Snowball 5K Run, held on the roads of Wantagh Saturday, Dec. 8. The 45-year-old took third place honors in the 45-49 age group, with a time of 28:03. Camillo is a proud member of the Greater Long Island Running Club and runs competitively for the club's racing team.

Doug Holewa of Garden City High School will represent the Nassau team as one of 21 high school students taking to the ice in the quest for the acclaimed Vytra Cup. Holewa and fellow teammates will compete against Suffolk rivals in the 6th annual Vytra Cup tourney at Nassau Coliseum Jan. 5 at 1 p.m.

Holewa will be a star right wing forward for the team. All players participating in the tournament were selected by the High School Hockey League Association of Nassau County and the Suffolk County High School Hockey League and include students from every member school within the leagues.

This year, Vytra is teaming up with Athletes Helping Athletes (AHA), a not-for-profit organization that administers a mentoring program pairing high profile athletes with high school students. The athletes and students work together on issues like drug and alcohol abuse prevention, nutrition and health education and fair play. Representatives from AHA will be at the coliseum distributing teen-related materials and selling raffles for official Islanders' merchandise and golf equipment. The Islanders have donated four tickets to an Islanders home game, an autographed team jersey and an autographed puck package. Newsday has donated two golf packages consisting of a putter, a golf shirt, a golf shoe bag and a hat.

The Vytra Cup kicks off the company's 2002 community events sponsorship season. Vytra will also sponsor road races, baseball, volleyball, soccer and other events this year. In total, Vytra will sponsor over 150 community events, involving more than 150,000 families on Long Island.

Charles Water of Charles Water Karate & Fitness has been teaching children for 20 years. His knowledge and experience increases every day as he continues to learn from his students and their parents. Parents of the students recently participated in a seminar that brought them to a higher awareness as to how their children were being taught along with a stronger understanding of what they were learning as well. It was a great turnout and will be an ongoing program within the school. Some of the points that were discussed were learning to pre-frame a child for success here and everywhere; learn coaching skills and ways to keep children excited about training in the martial arts and more.