NCAA honors SMU athletes for volunteer flood work

Saint Mary’s is one of three schools to receive this year’s National Association of Division III Athletics Administrators awards honoring community-service projects and activities.

Saint Mary’s athletes were recognized for their efforts to aid flood victims in Minnesota.

SMU, along with York College of Pennsylvania and Stevens Institute of Technology each will receive $1,000 contributions to their general scholarship funds as recipients of NADIIIAA/Jostens Community Service Awards for projects during the 2007-08 academic year.

Ten other institutions also earned recognition in the program, which has honored Division III athletics programs’ community-service efforts annually since 2002. All of the institutions will be recognized by NADIIIAA at the NCAA Convention in Washington, D.C.

Saint Mary’s is a category winner for the first time as this year’s honoree for a one-time project or activity. SMU student-athletes returned to campus from summer vacation in August 2007 to find that the university’s fieldhouse was serving as an emergency shelter for victims of flooding in southeastern Minnesota. The Saint Mary’s student-athlete advisory committee, which already had begun planning an event designed to increase camaraderie among the school’s athletics teams, shifted efforts to aiding the flood victims.

In collaboration with SMU’s Volunteer Services, nearly 200 student-athletes and their coaches collected food and water for flood-relief volunteers, and many of those student-athletes fanned out to nearby communities to clean up and repair homes and to help restore a state park. The student-athletes were credited by a relief worker with saving homeowners weeks of clean-up work while demonstrating compassion for flood victims.

To read more about SMU athletes’ flood-relief efforts, go to www.smumn.edu/floodcleanup.