Centralight

I am Central: Casey Smith Senior • Entrepreneurship In your four years at CMU, what have you learned? I started knowing that I wanted to work for myself, to start a company and to make money from it to support myself. But I learned along the way that sometimes you start with what you are passionate about and you go from there. For me, that's sports and helping kids be able to play sports. So how are you merging the two? In 2009 I presented the idea to create a company that collected new and used sports equipment and distributed it to kids in need in the College of Business' "Make a Pitch" competition. I won. That is what really showed me that there was a strong need for this – both business-wise and community-wise. Later that year I started Cleat Repeat. What inspired you to begin a nonprofi t? The idea for Cleat Repeat started after I drove past a high school teammate's house and saw it was foreclosed on. He was a freshman when I was a senior. I knew his family didn't have a lot of money and that he really wanted to play football, but it can be expensive to play sports. It was hard to see that, and it stuck with me. I wanted to help people in that type of situation. Any Cleat Repeat success stories you want to share? New ice skates were donated to Cleat Repeat and I delivered them to a girl in middle school. She says she needs to practice because she wants to skate in the Olympics. I am looking forward to see what happens. Why did you sign your name with a number? I played football and baseball in high school. It's my autograph with my football number. I've been practicing it since high school. … I needed to get it right in case I ever needed to sign it. I guess today is the day I've been waiting for. • 40 centralightentra ght spr alligh alightt spring '11 sp ng sp i ng ' 1 spririn 11g ''

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