ECC women's basketball team helps beautify Buffalo's Fireman's Park

Earlier this month, Erie Community College's Women's basketball squad, pictured, spent a preseason afternoon beautifying Buffalo's Fireman's Park, a neglected downtown greenspace near the team's Burt Flickinger Athletic Center home court.

Under the direction of its head basketball coach, Natosha Cummings-Price, the team executed its September cleanup primarily through raking, sweeping and weeding, all to rehab a public space surrounded by iconic downtown architecture and off the front doorstep of ECC's nearby City Campus locale.

This unique park structure is dedicated to the memory of Buffalo's firemen, and features such vocation-specific items as a fire helmet positioned on top of the flagpole (facing the fire station on South Division Street) and Maltese Cross-designed pathways symbolizing protection, as well as the Erie Community College-constructed fountain garden, installed by students, faculty and volunteers in 2012.

In cooperation with the City of Buffalo and Buffalo Place, many of ECC's student-athletes have been active in cleaning and maintaining the park - located between Washington and Ellicott streets, and North and South Division streets - over the past three years.

It is through this involvement with the community that the ECC Athletic Department - through its student-athletes, coaches and staff - hopes to make a difference to an area.