Sayreville student highlights positive impact of football team in video

Sayreville's high school football team lost its 2014 season to a hazing scandal and has endured a wave of negative publicity. But now a student there has created a video highlighting the team's positive impact on the community.

Scoreboard at Sayreville High School (Dino Flammia, Townsquare Media NJ)

"The next time you turn on the news and hear something negative about the Sayreville Bomber football program, I want you to remember all the good they've done for this town," says senior Kennedy MacFadyen in her production, "and that one mistake by a few does not negate all the good that they have done nor does it diminish the commitment and character they have displayed through it all"

WATCH: Sayreville War Memorial High School Football Program - The Team Behind The Town

The 17-year-old she was moved to make the video for her Communication Arts Through Television class because she was unhappy with the negative way members of the team were being portrayed in the media during coverage of the case. "I wanted the world to see the true Bomber football team" she explains, adding that she "a lot of good friends I've grown up with" on the team and she wanted to do the video in their honor which she says took 4 months to put together.

MacFadyen's video uses interviews with players to highlight the team's efforts to help those affected in Sayreville after Superstorm Sandy, to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless at Thanksgiving. She says the team will be helping out the Salvation Army and Elijah's Kitchen. "I want people to know they're a good group of boys, they will continue to be a good group of boys as generations move forward and have done nothing great things for this town," said MacFadyen, who is a Giants fan.

She would like to be a sportscaster and has been accepted to East Stroudsburg State.

The video includes footage of the team and its coaching staff, including head coach George Najjar who is currently on suspension.

Authorities say the charges against 7 students stem from incidents that allegedly took place on various dates between Sept. 19 and 29 of this year and involved one or more of the defendants holding the victims against their will, “while other juvenile defendants improperly touched the juvenile victims in a sexual manner.” The students were suspended from school and their cases will be tried in Juvenile Court.

Superintendent Richard Labbe, who cancelled the 2014 season, has reinstated the football program to resume for the fall season; the future of Najjar as coach is unclear.