Athletes pack meals to send to the Philippines

Approximately 150 athletes, in addition to athletic department staff, teamed up on Thursday afternoon to pack 40,000 meals to send to families in the Philippines who have been affected by the recent hurricane.

The group, which included members of the lacrosse, swimming and tennis teams, formed 14 assembly lines to efficiently pack rice, lentils, vegetables, Himalayan salt and some other seasonings and vitamins in bags. All supplies were provided by the nonprofit organization Feeding Children Everywhere.

“We were really excited to come over here and give you guys an opportunity to serve. That’s what we want to be about as an organization,” Peter Marshall, Feeding Children Everywhere’s West Coast event coordinator, told the students. “We want to help you guys get involved in service, and not just a place for dollars, but a place for you guys to be engaged and mobilized into serving your community locally and globally.”

Matt Ackels, director of community outreach for the athletic department, said Athletic Director Pat Haden wanted to do something for the Philippines because Wilfred “Fred” Uytengsu, one of department’s major donors, lives and works in the country.

Feeding Children Everywhere had previously done an event with the swim teams in August to pack 10,000 meals for local children. For this event, Ackels turned to the entire athletic department.

“I invited the coaches first and I got six or seven teams saying ‘Yeah, we’ll be there, we want to help out,’” Ackels said. “What really surprised me was just yesterday I emailed the entire athletic department staff and said what we’re doing and over half the staff wrote back saying, ‘I’ll be there.’”

Ackels noted that at least 30 staff members attended the event, including Haden himself.

“[The student athletes] do 3,000 hours of community service a year. … I’m trying to get to as many events as I can,” Haden said. “We’re told that 2 million people are without food [in the Philippines], so we’re just trying to do our part.”

Many student-athletes said they were excited they had the chance to give back.

“It’s just a good opportunity to help them. They’re really suffering right now,” said Annie Ruland, a freshman lacrosse player.

Coaches were also supportive of the event, even allowing athletes to volunteer instead of holding practice for the day.

“This is our 2 p.m. practice for Thursday afternoon,” Chase Bloch, co-captain of the swim team, joked.

Bloch, however, couldn’t resist making the event a competition in itself.

“It gets competitive. [Last time we] broke up into classes — freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior — and [had] a little race,” he said referring to the August event.

This time around, Marshall counted off athletes and assigned them to tables. The tables later raced to see who could fill two boxes of meals the fastest. Though the hour of packing meals was filled with fun, Ackels stressed that overall it was about helping others.

“It’s not, ‘cut us a check or send a couple people out to deliver something,’” he said of packing the meals. “It’s really ‘everybody get here, we’re going to pack this stuff and really have an impact.’”

 

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