By: Justin Lafleur, Lehigh Sports Media Relations
Lehigh student-athletes are consistently focused on making themselves better in all aspects of life. Instead of taking the summer off, many work, complete internships, stay sharp and get ready for their seasons ahead.
Add something thing to the list: making a difference in the lives of others. On June 25, a large contingent of student-athletes and staff headed to Philadelphia for rewarding community service work through Student-Athletes Leading Social Change.
“We were asked by the national SALSC leaders to join in on the event at Penrose Middle School in Philadelphia,” said senior Carissa Zito of the softball team, who is actively involved in the organization. “When there was a change of plans, they asked if we could get more athletes there for a day and also run a leadership workshop for the students. The purpose behind our trip was to meet and influence some younger students and help rebuild their athletic fields by doing things like painting, pulling weeds and putting up fencing.”
Despite it being the middle of summer, the Mountain Hawks sent representatives from almost ten different sports.
Lehigh has been heavily involved in SALSC with several service trips and fundraising events over the past few years. One example was this past winter, when the Mountain Hawks worked as Santa’s elves in writing Christmas letters.
Zito has extensive experience with SALSC and was the primary organizer of this summer’s trip.
“I got involved in SALSC my freshman year. I went on the New Orleans trip the summer going into my sophomore year with a bunch of other Lehigh athletes, just like this past trip,” she said. “I am now the SALSC intern, which means I converse with the co-captains and national SALSC leaders about fundraising and organizing the national trips.”
This summer’s event brought a challenge of corralling many student-athletes (besides those solely involved in SALSC). The response was pretty remarkable.
“We actually received more interest than we were expecting,” said Zito. “We had gotten the word out to some student-athletes who were excited from the beginning. Closer to the event, a few basketball players and a bunch of football players heard by word of mouth and were really eager to get involved, which was exciting to see. They were such a huge, huge help when it came to completing the job we had gone there to do.”
One of those people was junior Nick Shafnisky, a junior quarterback on the football team.
“The motivation was simple. The significance of the trip hit me when I heard middle school and high school kids weren’t even able to play a game because their fields were deemed unplayable,” said Shafnisky, a local product out of Whitehall. “I couldn’t imagine missing a whole year of not playing games because my field was in too bad condition. We at Lehigh have the chance to play the game we love every day. One day of helping out a school so those kids can play and compete, I almost had to go.”
The day featured two parts, meeting with students from the school then helping rebuild athletic fields and facilities.
“In the morning, we played the human knot challenge with the students in order to teach them about communication and leadership skills,” said Zito. “After the challenge, we had a group conversation about what everyone learned from the experience. It was nice to get a one-on-one with the students we were helping.”
The athletic fields are located approximately one mile away from the school.
“The fields needed a lot of work and we put a huge dent in what needed to be done,” said Zito. “We helped paint their locker rooms, we put up fencing around the football field and pulled weeds along the way, and we helped paint their stadium stairs.”
“We went to the football field and track, painted the bleachers and made them look much better and nicer,” said Shafnisky. “We painted the field house, and also hung up wind-blockers on the fences to help keep debris and garbage out of the stadium. The blockers helped give the field a much better look as well.”
The experience didn’t only benefit the school and its students, but these opportunities are always hugely rewarding for Lehigh’s student-athletes.
“The feeling at the end of a hard day’s work feels so much better when you know that you were helping people that deserved it and needed it,” said Zito. “We did not completely transform their fields in one day, but we helped push the process forward, which I think is pretty remarkable in just one day.”
“No matter what you do, helping others who are less fortunate than you always makes you feel like you’re changing one small problem at a time,” said Shafnisky. “On top of helping the kids, I had the opportunity to meet other athletes and coaches at Lehigh whom I’ve never met before. I made some friends, helped out less-fortunate kids have a better high school experience, and had a lot of fun in the process.”
Shafnisky has great perspective of the Lehigh student-athlete experience and couldn’t be more complimentary of the opportunities Lehigh provides.
“The services Lehigh is involved in are unbelievably rewarding, more than one may think,” he said. “Getting to meet the kids and seeing how happy they were to meet college athletes was rewarding in itself. I was talking to the head track coach for the high school team. Her husband is the football coach at the high school. She told me they could never play a home game, so they had to travel far just to play a game.”
Shafnisky became truly invested in the cause. After finishing for the day, he and a few others went out onto the field and played catch with some of the youngsters.
“That was awesome to witness, especially when one of the workers came up to me and said that his son played for the school team and seeing Nick throw the ball with the kids was very humbling,” said senior MacKenzie Velasquez of the softball team. “More than one worker came up to me and commented on Nick’s ability to connect with those kids.”
Everyone who attended the event represented Lehigh exceptionally well, led by Shafnisky. He is a model example of Lehigh student-athletes going above and beyond and taking part in initiatives like this for true, genuine reasons.
“Carissa was stellar in organizing the workshop in so little time and Nick’s interactions really stood out,” said Velasquez. “Those kids had an opportunity to spend time with a college athlete and got to talk with one as experienced as Nick is on the field. Nick was able to show them that nothing is unattainable if you put the work into it.”
On the surface, the tangible component of this story is an athletic field, but proper fields mean much more.
“Because of traveling all year due to lack of adequate fields, almost none of the kids’ parents were able to see their sons play a single game all year,” said Shafnisky. “When I was in high school, one of my biggest motivators was making my parents proud. I wanted other parents and fans to go up to my dad and mom after every game and tell them how proud they should be of me. Without my parents at every game, I can honestly say I wouldn’t be playing Division I football.
“When the track coach told me how much of an impact we had by giving one day of our lives to help those kids, it put everything in perspective,” he continued. “It hit me very hard. This is why I was so glad I went to help out, along with all the other Lehigh student-athletes and coaches who were there.”
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