Sports greats' golf event to benefit kids

Some big names in sports and the business world will be on Long Island Monday playing golf. But not just for the fun of it, if golf can indeed be considered fun.

Former Boston Celtics star Bill Russell and Locust Valley investment banker Geoff Boisi, who advised General Electric chairman Jack Welch on GE's $45-billion acquisition of Honeywell International, have organized an outing at the exclusive Friar's Head course in Riverhead to benefit the Mentoring Partnership of New York and Long Island and the National Mentoring Partnership.

Such sports legends as Julius Erving, Reggie Jackson, Steve Largent and Jim Brown are also expected to tee off today. The event, the Mentor's Champions Golf Challenge, will be the first of its kind on the East Coast.

Jean Cohen, the local executive director, said there are about 200 programs on the Island mentoring about 7,000 children.

Boisi, a co-founder of the national partnership 20 years ago, said he hopes to raise about $700,000 from the golf tournament. Boisi two decades ago met with President George H.W. Bush to talk about ways "disconnected children" could be brought into the mainstream. Boisi is still a mentor.

Brian Ziegler, a partner in the East Meadow law firm Certilman Balin, which participates in the mentoring program, is a mentor at Walnut Street Elementary School in Uniondale.

"We try to be role models, someone they can have fun with but who can still install a drive and goal in them," Zeigler said.