Central New York spends plenty of its energy on sports. The passion is palpable everywhere you turn, especially when it comes to the Orange. That’s part of what makes this region special, and has fueled the success of media platforms like this one. But every so often a story comes along that reminds you what all of that passion is actually built on top of.
On Sunday, 250 people showed up at Foxfire in Baldwinsville for the first annual Mighty Max Classic, a golf tournament benefiting a one-year-old named Max Moquin and the pediatric cancer nonprofit Griffin’s Guardians. Max was diagnosed with an extremely rare cancer just three weeks after he was born in April 2025. He beat it, ringing the cancer-free bell that November. Five months later, right around his first birthday, doctors found tumors in his brain. He’s since undergone emergency surgery, endured a 23-day hospital stay, and continues chemotherapy and scans. His parents, Zach and Lauren Moquin, have been told his cancer is terminal.
In the wake of this heartbreaking story, 250 locals showed up for him. A full field of 144 golfers, plus more than a hundred people at the dinner afterward. The presenting sponsor was the Lobdell family, spearheaded by Vinny Lobdell whose name shows up constantly around Syracuse athletics, from his personal court hosting the epic Summer Slam to being cited by SU’s own athletic director as proof of the department’s momentum. This weekend, his family’s name was attached to something that had nothing to do with wins, losses, or NIL dollars. The Lobdells helped lead the way for this region to rally together for one of its own and make sure a young boy isn’t fighting alone.
The event also benefited Griffin’s Guardians, a Cicero-based nonprofit with its own version of this exact story sitting underneath it. It was founded by Erin Engle in memory of her son Griffin, who died from brain cancer at age seven. What started as one family’s grief has grown into a full regional support network for other families going through the same nightmare, funding research, covering medical bills, running care packages for the siblings of sick children who quietly get overlooked in a crisis. A teenager named Kevin Toms has run a bottle-and-can drive for the organization every year since he was seven years old, in honor of his best friend Griffin, and has raised over $19,000 doing it. That’s not a professional fundraising operation. That’s a kid who lost a friend and decided to do something about it, year after year, for nearly a decade.
Put those threads together, and you get something worth remembering. This region will always spend time arguing over football losses, and lamenting the March Madness drought. But when a family gets hit with the worst news imaginable, this same region turns out 250 people to a golf course in support, led by one of the biggest names in Syracuse athletics.
“The tournament isn’t about feeling sorry for us,” Lauren Moquin said. “It’s about showing Max what it looks like when an entire community decides to stand behind one little boy.”
That’s not just a nice sentiment. That’s actually what this place does. Sports gives this community a reason to gather. What happens once we’re gathered is the part worth being proud of.
