GENESEO – A SUNY Geneseo student and hockey player who recently suffered a severe head injury after a skateboarding accident in the village is drawing the campus and community together for Friday night’s home hockey game.
The team told news partner 13WHAM that they have made t-shirts and bracelets in support of Jason ‘Jay’ Stephanik, a forward for the team, and will wear them during the game at 7 p.m. Jay suffered a fractured skull and bleeding frontal lobe on Oct. 25, but refused ambulance treatment and was not admitted to the hospital until Oct. 28.
Jay is currently working on walking and talking Strong Memorial Hospital.
A GoFundMe.com fundraising page created on Nov. 1 has raised $32,251 as of 11:40 a.m. on Nov. 6, up from $20,690 on the morning of Nov. 3.
Statistics from GoFundMe say that the page has been shared over 2,000 times through Facebook and Twitter, and there have been 457 individual donations so far for Jay.
“You got this Jay! God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers,” posted Christy Rittenhouse Schultz to the GoFundMe page on Nov. 2. “Prayers coming your way round the clock from the Schultz’s!”
In the 2014-15 season, Stephanik played in 16 games scoring 1 goal and had 5 assists.
Stephanik also played with the Sioux Falls Stampede in the Unitied States Hockey League (USHL) the premier Junior “A” League in the country.