Team Friends announces new chapter, its first out of state, during annual fundraiser

A local nonprofit with four Western Pennsylvania chapters is following the yellow brick road to a new frontier — West Virginia.

Supporters of Team Friends gathered Sept. 23 at Narcisi Winery in West Deer for its annual fundraiser. They spent the evening enjoying live music by Acoustic Union, wine tastings, dinner and a cookie table before learning about Team Friends’ newest and first out-of-state chapter in Morgantown, W.Va.

Team Friends brings together adults with intellectual disabilities — whom they refer to as “players” — and their families or habitation aides to monthly social events and activities organized by head coaches.

This year’s fundraiser — “Building a Brighter Tomorrow One Brick at a Time” — was “Wizard of Oz” themed. Several players dressed as “Wizard of Oz” characters while other players, such as Carlese Sadler of Sharpsburg, read quotes from the movie to attendees.

“This is a quote by Glinda: ‘You always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself.’ Thank you to all of our guests. Through Team Friends, we have the power and are making a difference in the lives of others,” Sadler said.

Susan Cataldi, a retired Fox Chapel Area High School life skills teacher and Kennedy Township resident, founded Team Friends with her husband, Ted, to help adults with intellectual disabilities and their families socialize and be in community with each other.

“When they’re in high school, there’s a vast array of activities for them to do, organizations for them to be a part of. There’s so much socialization that goes on in high school,” Cataldi said. “When they graduate, that socialization kind of plummets. Being around friends, typical peers — it just isn’t there anymore.”

Cataldi started the first chapter in 2015 with a core group of students she had taught at the high school.

Master of ceremonies for the fundraiser, John Broderick of Cheswick, said his daughter, Emily, was part of that first core group and still loves participating each month.

“Emily loves the activities,” Broderick said. “On the way home, she always says to me, ‘That went too fast.’ ”

O’Hara resident Laura Sams said her daughter, Kaylee, also was one of Cataldi’s former students who became a player in the founding chapter. Sams said Team Friends has been “a great support.”

“It’s nice to get together with the other parents, with the other friends that you make along the way,” Sams said. “We just do a lot of good, fun things together. And we do philanthropic things, to show the world that (the players) can give back.”

To show how players can not just receive care but give back in return, Team Friends facilitates philanthropic activities such as making blankets for the homeless, conducting food drives for the Pittsburgh Food Bank and Humane Society, making personal care bags for a women’s shelter and more.

The nonprofit has grown to four Pennsylvania county chapters — Allegheny, Westmoreland, Indiana and Armstrong.

Now that they’ve shown proof of concept in Pennsylvania, Cataldi said she is eager to prove Team Friends can work in other states as well with the new Morgantown chapter.

“We could give somebody our manual, our mission statement, funding, everything, and they could start a chapter,” Cataldi said. “If we can show proof of concept in another state, we really feel that Team Friends could go nationwide.”

Team Friends is expanding to Morgantown with the help of Monica Marietta and Bayley Frashure from SteppingStones, a Morgantown nonprofit that provides recreation and personal development opportunities for children and adults with disabilities.

Marietta, the executive director of SteppingStones, said she was immediately “enthralled and wanted to be involved” when the Cataldis visited her at the beginning of summer and told her what they do through Team Friends.

“Their mission and their vision and everything that they’re doing just really aligns with what we do,” Marietta said. “Being able to bring other people in and do a different version of what we do just seemed like a no-brainer.”

The new Team Friends chapter will be housed at and run through SteppingStones as its own program. Marietta plans to be directly involved as a coach who helps plan and coordinate events and activities.

“Team Friends is just one of those things that I literally fell in love with,” Marietta said. “I definitely decided immediately that I wanted to be a coach.”

Broderick said it’s thanks to all the heart and soul Ted and Susan Cataldi put into Team Friends that the organization has grown so much.

“I mean, it’s gone from, like I said, maybe 10 parents at the first meeting to four chapters here in Western Pa. and now a chapter in West Virginia. It’s really a blessing,” Broderick said.