It was a combined team effort last Thursday at Sequoia Elementary School.

The Manteca Unified school site welcomed representatives of the NBA G League’s Stockton Kings to help out with the monthly food drive benefiting members of the community.

Those of the professional hoop organization affiliated with the Sacramento Kings worked alongside students of both the Sequoia basketball team and Leadership, distributing food to those in need.

“Today our goal was to distribute food to at least 300 families in our community,” said the school’s Outreach Assistant Marisela Martinez, who was thrilled to have the Stockton Kings at this monthly drive-thru event along the campus parking lot.

The food drives similar to this are held at various MUSD sites, according to Jessica Vaughan, who is Director of Development at the local Second Harvest Food Bank.

“This is a wonderful partnership that we have between Kaiser Permanente and the Stockton Kings – they wanted a non-profit to sponsor this year (and) we were luck enough to be chosen,” she said.

In her role as Outreach assistant, Martinez helped in determining the needs of the community within the Sequoia attendance area.

But it’s not just food.

“Families are welcome to contact us so that we can help them find the resources that they need – food, shelter or social-emotional help,” she said.

Since September, Sequoia has been the conducting the once-a-month food drives – the others at MUSD includes Joseph Widmer (Lathrop) and Great Valley (Weston Ranch) – using students and volunteers to package and distribute food.

This was the first time that the Stockton Kings’ involvement in a food-drive at an MUSD school site.

“When people think food-drives, they think, ‘oh, it’s the holiday,’ but really, the need is every month and sometimes every day,” said Martinez.