In an effort to give back to the community, members of the Hampton Bays High School Leos Club have participated in a number of community service activities throughout the month of December.

Most recently, the club members joined together to cook breakfast and serve dinner to the homeless at St. Mary’s Church in Hampton Bays as part of nonprofit Maureen’s Haven Homeless Outreach Program. The program relies on volunteers to help feed and supervise homeless guests who are given shelter at East End churches during the winter.

In addition to helping Maureen’s Haven, the club members have been spreading holiday cheer. They recently visited the Riverhead Care Center and Southampton Hospital to sing Christmas carols.

Photo Caption: Hampton Bays High School Leo Club members Zoey Smith and Michael Del Rey prepare food for Maureen’s Haven.

Photo courtesy of the Hampton Bays School District

Lehigh’s freshmen student-athletes hear all about the Adopt-A-Family program from their teammates, but it’s impossible to truly understand what it means until they go through the process.

“Experiencing tonight definitely makes you want to participate even more,” said freshman Autumn Ryan of women’s lacrosse. “I’m definitely going to make time next year to be involved. Until you see your families open the gifts, you really don’t get the full experience.”

Last Thursday, the Mountain Hawks’ 18th Annual Adopt-A-Family came to a close with the final event at Broughal Middle School in Bethlehem. The night featured all the teams meeting their families, giving them gifts and simply enjoying each other’s company.

“The event is honestly very hard to put into words,” said Alicia Creazzo, Community School Coordinator at Broughal Middle School. “It is a magical event for our families. There are many of our families here from Broughal, families from Donegan, Fountain Hill and Calypso who don’t have the means to provide for their children, sometimes on a daily basis, but especially for the holidays. The student-athletes stepping up makes a huge impact for them. It gives them some relief and takes the weight off of their shoulders.

“The families don’t have to stress out about being able to purchase for their families for Christmas because Lehigh is filling that gap and filing that void for them,” she continued.

Adopt-A-Family is a special kind of community service.

“As a freshman, you tend to relate things as far as community service projects back to what you did in high school,” said senior Buck Schwab of the baseball team, who co-chaired Adopt-A-Family along with women’s soccer senior Tori Pantaleo. “This is much different. This is everybody at a Division I school in a big-time community getting together for something so selfless and so powerful around this time of year that it makes you realize how special the people around you are and how much the Bethlehem community looks up to us. Giving back is the least we could do for them.”
12/12/2016 18th Annual Adopt-A-Family, 12/8/16 18th Annual Adopt-A-Family, 12/8/16

One of the reasons Adopt-A-Family is special is because it’s extremely engaging. It’s a process that takes a lot of hard work, planning and teamwork. Student-athletes take part in something larger than themselves.

“What’s special is all the hard work that all different people put into this,” said Schwab. “Every single team was represented at wrapping day. Every single team was represented at shopping day. It’s all of us together. That feeling of togetherness is exactly what we carried to the final night, which was like the capstone.”

The student-athletes fundraised for their families, took the time to individually pick out gifts, wrap them and then present them to their families. On Thursday, Broughal was buzzing with tears of joy, laughter and plenty of smiles.

“It’s really nice to see all the different teams interacting with their families,” said Ryan. “There was even a dance off. Everyone is super excited when they open their gifts. You see the kids’ and even the parents’ faces light up. I even think our mom was getting teary eyed. To actually see their reactions, it really takes you back and makes you appreciate the things you have.”

Some youngsters even took out their gifts and started playing them with the Lehigh student-athletes.

“It’s indescribable the feeling you get when you see how excited these families are to be able to receive something that they might not be able to provide on their own,” said Schwab. “For us to do that as a student-athlete community, it’s not only very powerful for representing ourselves, but also the Bethlehem community. It makes us feel like we’re part of something much, much bigger.”

“We very often have parents crying,” said Creazzo. “It’s tears of joy because Lehigh student-athletes are lifting a weight off their shoulders by being here and providing for them. Music is playing and there’s also singing (by Derek Knott of the football team), which isn’t something you often think of when you think of student-athletes at Lehigh. They come in and put on a great performance for us.”

After her first Adopt-A-Family, sophomore Lindsay Alvarez entered this year with a much different perspective.

“Last year, I thought this was an event where people came and didn’t really interact with the families,” said Alvarez. “This year, I understood what the event is about – everybody gets to know the families, everybody eats with the families, we watch them open their gifts and we really talk to them and get to know them.”

The event brings out the best in the Mountain Hawks. Everyone has a hand, with several putting in countless hours and going above and beyond, embracing and engaging in the process of helping the community. There’s a motivating factor behind the student-athletes getting involved.

“For me, the program is important because every year, I’ve always experienced a great holiday,” said Alvarez. “All around the world, I think everybody should get to experience a holiday with their family and everybody should get gifts.”

In the end, the Adopt-A-Family program helped more than 50 local families have a holiday season to remember. It’s an event that has remained very steady because it has been so successful. However, everyone is constantly looking to improve, push the envelope and make Adopt-A-Family better and better every year. So far, so go.

“I hope that 20 years down the road, when I come back, that it’s even bigger and better than ever,” said Schwab. “I hope it continues to grow. I hope they find new ways to approach it. I hope they do different things.

“It should never stop. We should continually try to progress an event like this. Being a part of it for my short four years here has been nothing but the greatest.”

Source: http://www.lehighsports.com/news/2016/12/12/general-adopt-a-family-a-special-kind-of-community-service.aspx

As the holiday season approaches, student-athletes continue to volunteer their time to good causes.

Kelly Magliano, junior volleyball player, is a member of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Love Your Melon crew. Love Your Melon is a popular organization and many crews exist at universities across the nation.

The organization sells apparel, mainly hats, with the goal of helping children with cancer. The same hats that get sold to consumers are donated to children with cancer. The more apparel that is sold the more donations that the organization is able to make.

Last week Magliano and other members of the crew stood outside of Trigs grocery store and rung bells in hopes of raising money for the salvation army. The Love Your Melon crew also volunteered at the Stevens Point Area YMCA’s annual Frostbite winter race and road walk.

“Getting out there and helping the community shows that we have respect for the community, so we can get that mutual respect back,” Magliano said.

Sarah Gamillo, senior basketball player, also dedicated her time to help others.

On Nov. 30 Gamillo and her teammates played basketball while helping other students on campus. The women’s basketball team accepted nonperishable food from fans, in exchange for a free ticket to their game.

The nonperishable food was donated to UWSP’s cupboard, which is a food pantry that is accessible to all students. The pantry can be found on campus in the Dreyfus University Center. The pantry aims to help students with financial struggles access food at no cost.

“We are students too, we are not just athletes and it feels good to help out other students as well. It’s very rewarding to give back to the community,” Gamillo said.

Joel Harris, senior swimmer, is the vice-president of the Student Athletic Advisory Committee.

In late October Harris, along with other student-athletes, went door-to-door in a Plover neighborhood collecting nonperishable food for the pantry on campus. The homes that they stopped at had been previously notified that Harris and his peers would be collecting non-perishables.

According to Harris, the athletes were able to collect just under 600 pounds of food.

Harris said, “I consider myself a pretty fortunate person, so to help others that are not as fortunate really helps me grow as a person.”

Source: http://thepointeruwsp.com/2016/12/12/tis-the-season-to-volunteer/

Caroline Chalk

Reporter

cchal845@uwsp.edu

AUBURN, Ala. – Kullen Hlawek knew the best way to get her fellow Auburn student-athletes to become invested in a food drive: make it a competition.

“We had donations from every single sport,” said Hlawek, a gymnast who serves as president of Auburn’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. “If there’s one thing we can do, we can compete. It got pretty heated. Pretty intense. The buy-in from all of the sports was fantastic.”

Motivated by a desire to help fellow students in need, and to earn bragging rights among their peers, Auburn student-athletes purchased and donated three truckloads of food during a two-week span in the fall semester.

“We were just really happy to be able to help them,” Hlawek said. “To be able to help was a really great opportunity for us.”

Once student-athletes learned that some of their fellow students struggle with food insecurity, Hlawek says they were eager to assist. “We have athletes coming to SAAC now asking, ‘Can we do more?’

SAAC president Kullen Hlawek speaks to student-athletes at the Tiger Tailgate in August.
“People have really jumped all in on both the food pantry and any other community service that we can do to help those who aren’t as fortunate as we are,” she said.

The competition awarded points based on preferences from the students who use the food pantry: 5 points for rice and pasta, 3 for peanut butter, 1 for a 12-pack of ramen noodles.

Men’s swimming and diving won the event, earning nearly twice as many points as the second-place team.

“They really jumped on board and brought in almost a truckload of food,” Hlawek said.

Located in the Student Center, the food pantry began serving students four years ago. Between 70-80 students have received food there this semester, an average of six to 10 students per week.

Katherine Hettinger, who runs the student food pantry, says Hlawek and the SAAC members were enthused and effective.

“We were blown away by the amount of food they raised for us,” Hettinger said. “It wasn’t like they put bins outside one of their athletic events and said, ‘Hey, everybody who comes to the game, donate food.’ They did this just amongst themselves.”

Auburn student-athletes donated enough food to supply the pantry, which provides food for Auburn University students who identify as food insecure, well into the spring semester, says Hettinger.

“It just speaks to their level of service, philanthropy and just giving back,” Hettinger said. “They made it a priority. It was really amazing.

“I see every day how that impacts our students who are food insecure. It really makes a difference for students who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. To have that level of support, that other people at Auburn want them to be successful, is awesome.”

Source: http://www.auburntigers.com/genrel/120916aaa.html

MADISON, Wis. — Student-athletes from Wisconsin’s men’s and women’s rowing, golf, and track & field teams took part in the annual Toys for Tots campaign benefitting the U.S. Marine Corps this past weekend, December 2-3.

At the men’s hockey game on Dec. 2, student-athletes encouraged donations by playing chuck-a-puck, where fans donated money in order to chuck a hockey puck onto the ice towards a target. The next day, the men’s basketball team took on Oklahoma and student-athletes collected monetary and toy donations from patrons as they entered the gates.

The monetary donations collected at the sporting events over the weekend will go towards making sure every child in Dane and Jefferson County receive a toy this holiday season. Aya Johnson, UW Women’s Golf, helped collected donations with Badgers Give Back.
The student-athlete volunteers, the marine volunteers and the fans who donated worked together to make Toys for Tots a successful event. “It was a great experience to take part in an event that means so much to so many people,” said Aya Johnson of the women’s golf team. “It was awesome to see the entire community come together for a cause.”

The Toys for Tots campaign collected 133 toys and $5,778 in monetary donations for the weekend. These proceeds will go towards helping to make sure children in Dane and Jefferson Counties receive a gift this holiday season.

“We enjoyed working with Badgers Give Back and Wisconsin Athletics,” said Gunnery Sergeant Stoudemayer, who heads the Toys for Tots campaign in Dane County. “Thanks for a great and successful weekend!”

Source: http://www.uwbadgers.com/news/2016/12/9/badgers-give-back-badgers-take-on-toys-for-tots.aspx