Packers Coach of the Week Toby Golembiewski Gives Back During Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Monroe Toby Golembiewski believes in teaching his players there’s more to the sport than just wins and losses.

A couple years back, Coach Golembiewski decided he wanted his team to raise funds for a greater cause in the community of Monroe, Wisconsin.

During October, Golembiewski would regularly see high school players wearing pink, but discovered that many of them didn't know the color was in support of breast cancer awareness. Golembiewski has a mother who is a cancer survivor and a sister-in-law who lost her fight to cancer. So he decided to highlight the importance of the true meaning behind wearing pink with his team.

"I thought, you know what guys, we are not just going to wear pink, we're going to put the money where our mouth is," said Golembiewski. "We're going to represent people that we know who have gone through cancer, and we're going to take the money from our fundraiser to make a sizable donation towards our cancer charity."

That education has led to his players raising over $11,000 over the last couple of years, which Monroe's student council donated to Justice for a Cure.

Golembiewski said the whole community helped the team surpass their initial goal of $5,000. "Our community supports that fundraiser, whether they're into football or not."

After winning Wisconsin’s Division 3 state championship last year, Coach Golembiewski had to tell his team that he was diagnosed with colon cancer.

His love of the game is one of his driving factors as he goes through chemotherapy.

"Football is my medicine,” said Golembiewski. "When we are doing weightlifting in the offseason, when we are doing practices and games, now I pay for it a little bit afterwards.

"I spoke at the WFCA clinic with a pump that was pumping chemo into my body, and I was getting a chemo treatment while I was speaking. But when you're doing football stuff or educating people about football or teaching and working with kids, for me, the energy is incredible and it's really been my medicine through all of this."

Monroe’s defense of its state title begins this weekend after a 7-2 finish during the regular season. The Green Bay Packers honored Golembiewski as their High School Coach of the Week. 

See the other winners:

AFC

NFC