High School Hockey Team Shovels Snow To Raise Money For Coach With Son Battling Cancer

RIDGEWOOD, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- A group of New Jersey high school athletes traded in their hockey sticks for shovels to help raise money for their coach's infant son who has cancer.

Broken tree limbs still litter streets and yards in Ridgewood after last week's nor'easter.

Whole those flakes were falling, high school senior Joe Rahaim and his buddies found a silver lining in the snow; they shoveled 31 driveways.

"We ended up raising $4,013," he told CBS2's Jessica Layton. "I felt like this we could something we could do to give back."

The money went towards a family in need. The Ridgewood School hockey captain, who owns the website "Joe's Odd Jobs" rallied his teammates and other teens to do the work and donate the money to Coach Anthony Katchen, whose one-year-old son Austin is battling cancer.

"I was actually outside shoveling too, so I know how much work they had to put into it," Katchen said.

Little did he know, they were doing the work for him. Katchen says he can't remember a time he's been so touched.

CBS2 caught up with him outside the hospital in New York City where his baby boy just started chemotherapy.

"What they went out and did, their selflessness, it keeps us uplifted," Katchen said. "It keeps us going, so we can be there for our family and my son."

The snow is almost gone in Ridgewood, but Joe says if there's another storm he and his family would likely donate the money they get from shoveling to the Katchen family again. If there's no more snow, they'll plan a fundraiser for the spring.

After paying it forward for a role model who's made a lasting impression by teaching them important lessons, now they can return that reminder in the Katchen family's most trying time.