Moorestown Girl Meets Mia Hamm After Achieving Fundraising Goal

Late August typically isn’t the prime time to open a lemonade stand—mid-summer is the ideal market—but when 10-year-old Ilana Jacobs learned she had a chance to meet her idol, women’s soccer player Mia Hamm, she was resolved to do everything she could to fulfill that dream.

Through her participation in the Moorestown Soccer Club, Ilana, a fourth-grader at the , learned of a fundraiser being sponsored by the New Jersey Youth Soccer League (NJYSL) to benefit the Mia Hamm Foundation. Specifically, she learned that the most successful fundraisers in the state would be given the opportunity to eat lunch and play soccer with Hamm, and a very lucky few would get to eat at the table with the U.S. Women’s Soccer legend.

With the help of a friend, Ilana sold lemonade from the sidewalk outside her house from the end of August through mid-November. She made the largest chunk of her money though by soliciting friends, family and neighbors, knocking on doors and sending out emails, her mother, Mara Jacobs, said.

“If you’re a girl, and you play the sport, and you have a chance to meet Mia Hamm, you get motivated,” said Mara. “It was a freezing cold lemonade stand, but she made the money.”

Ilana was so confident she’d meet her goal, Mara said, she sent an email to the NJYSL the very first day she started fundraising that read, “‘I will be having lunch with Mia Hamm and I will be sitting at the table with her.’”

By the time she’d finished fundraising, Ilana had collected more than $3,500, which made her the third-highest fundraiser in the state. More importantly, it meant she would get to eat lunch with Mia Hamm.

There were about 75 kids, plus dozens of their guests, at the lunch with Hamm last month. But Ilana was one of the few who got to sit and eat with her, which evoked contradictory emotions in Ilana.

“I was really excited and just thought, ‘Wow, I get to meet Mia Hamm,’” Ilana said. “I was really nervous, but also really excited.”

After lunch, the kids got to play soccer with Hamm who, though she was about seven months pregnant at the time, played far better than an expectant mother should, according to Mara Jacobs.

Though meeting her sports idol is a plenty good reason for a little girl to achieve what Ilana achieved, Mara said her daughter was motivated by a deeper purpose as well. When Ilana read up on the Mia Hamm Foundation and learned it provided support to families who needed bone marrow or cord blood transplants—and that Hamm’s own brother had died from complications related to a bone marrow disorder—Ilana was moved.

“She was very empathetic to Mia’s cause,” said Mara.

“I got really interested in doing it cause if I raised the money other people wouldn’t have to suffer … and could get cord blood,” said Ilana, adding, “It was a really great experience.”