PU teams aim to win one for the needy

Community service puts athletes into action.

By: David Campbell
   Princeton University athletes are banding together to spread some gift-giving cheer among needy families this holiday season.
   This is the fifth year of a special community-service project organized by a campus group called Athletes in Action.
   Under the club’s Teams and Toys Holiday Project, each of the participating sports teams "adopts" an underprivileged family in the region, pools money and buys gifts.
   Families are referred by the Mercer County Board of Social Services, and most are from the Trenton area.
   This year’s outreach program is noteworthy because of the high volume of participation. All 38 of the university’s varsity athletic teams are participating, as well as a club team and some other groups, said Amanda Erickson, student director of the project.
   "I’m on the softball team, and we have a family with three girls," said Ms. Erickson, 20, a junior at the university who is majoring in religious studies.
   About 1,500 students are involved in the gift-giving initiative this year, comprising a significant proportion of the overall student body at Princeton, she continued.
   About 44 families from the Trenton area have been adopted and can look forward to gifts this holiday season through Athletes in Action in cooperation with the county.
   According to Ms. Erickson, the kids in the family the softball team is hosting have already forwarded a list of gifts they hope to receive — "a little bit of an idea of what the kids might want," she noted.
   Each year, Athletes in Action throws a "wrapping party" where participants bring their wrapping paper and supplies, and while enjoying some food and good cheer, wrap the gifts that will then be passed along to the recipient families via the county agency.
   This year’s wrapping party was held Dec. 9 in the Frist Campus Center’s multipurpose room.
   Athletes in Action is an interdenominational Christian fellowship for college athletes. The organization has a presence on campuses throughout the nation and in several countries worldwide.
   At Princeton, the group’s goal is to help student athletes use school athletics in a faith-based effort to promote positive change in their personal lives and in society as a whole, according to the group’s Web site at Princeton.
   The holiday gift-giving project for the area’s needy families helps teams at the university project a positive, community-centered image, Ms. Erickson said.
   As a Christian group, she continued, the Athletes in Action program is also a great way to do some needed community service and to help others.
   She said the effort, which has brought together so many athletes and others this year at the university, has been very gratifying.
   "It’s just very touching to be able to give back to the community, to kind of extend God’s love beyond the Princeton ‘bubble’ and to touch the community around us," Ms. Erickson said.
   "I think this is so exciting," she added. "It’s really cool just to know that it’s becoming a well-established community-service event."