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Allan Guei, a high school basketball star from Compton has decided to donate the $40,000 dollar prize he won in a free-throw contest to the contestants he beat. Rivals High School reports:

Guei, a star player on the basketball team who is headed to Cal-State Northridge on a full scholarship, said he felt the others could use the college cash more than he could. He wanted to give his classmates a chance to make their academic dreams come true, too.

“I’ve already been blessed so much and I know we’re living with a bad economy, so I know this money can really help my classmates,” he said in a release from the school. “It was the right decision.”

The event – a foul-shooting contest for top academic students at Compton High School in Los Angeles – was created with a simple premise: Organizers wanted to show the kids at Compton how to create community spirit with college scholarship money as the incentive.

One that stunned Court Crandall, the man behind the event.

“What he has done is exceptional, just like Allan,” he said. “Like any young people, whether it’s my kids or someone else’s, you hope they are given opportunities to show what they can do. These Compton High grads have a lot of talent. They have a lot of drive, and I wish them all the best.”

Crandall, a partner at the Southern California advertising firm WDCW and a hollywood screenwriter whose credits include “Old School,” came up with the idea after watching his 16-year-old son play on a basketball team with some Compton students.

Crandall felt foul shooting was something that could unite a community regardless of racial divide. He felt doing it in Compton – a community battling an image problem – could help change those attitudes, too.

“I thought the free throw is a good metaphor in a world where there’s a bunch of lines that are kind of dividing us,” Crandall said afterward. “The focus became, how do we show the world another side of Compton, that’s more positive, beyond the stereotypical guns and crime stuff.”

The only requirement for the contest is that the students must have a GPA of 3.0 and above. After receiving nearly 100 applicants, eight contestants were chosen at random. The contest was held in March.

“My hope was that what started as a competition would become a collaboration with the kids supporting each other,” Crandall told the L.A. Times. “They did, but in the end they did that to a much greater extent than I ever could have anticipated.”

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article courtesy of Newsone.com/HighSchoolRivals.com

Free Throw update from Court Crandall on Vimeo.

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