Rustlers Volleyball teams host food drive

The Lakeland College Rustlers Volleyball teams hosted a food drive with all donations going to the Salvation Army at their home games this past Friday night when they took on the Grande Prairie Regional College Wolves.

The idea sprung from the women's volleyball team beginning-of-the-season meeting in which they set goals. The team looks at core values for the season and set goals in three aspects. The three aspects are known as "The Three C's" and include the court, the classroom and the community.

The "Court" aspect includes goals such as a win-loss record and finishing provincially or nationally. The "Classroom" goals include a GPA minimum for the team as well as a commitment to their studies.

Lastly, the team sets goals for the "Community," as it is a very important aspect of being a student-athlete in a small city. "We always want to give back to the community that has given us so much,"fifth-year setter, Rae Sigurdson, said about having community-minded goals set every year of her career. The team sets goals to participate in volunteer activities or give back to the community in some capacity at least once a semester, "we always make coaching and helping out with our club volleyball program a priority, but we want to do a little bit more every year."

In the first semester, as well as last year, the women's volleyball team participated in Operation Christmas Child, a program that allows people to fill shoeboxes full of gifts and toiletry items that go to children in need.

In the second semester, they planned this food drive, as they thought it would be a simple way for them to be able to give back. The men's and women 's volleyball teams joined forces to bring in maximum donations. "We knew the hardest part of running a food drive was going to be awareness; we needed to get our message out to the public," said Sigurdson, "social media was a big tool we used, and Primetime Local News did a feature on it as well, which was a huge help."

To say the food drive was a success would be an understatement, "We were completely shocked at the amount of donations that came in," added fifth-year outside hitter, Shelby Becker, "plus it was probably the largest crowd we've had out this year."

There was no exact weigh-in of the donations, but the Rustlers easily filled the 10 crates they brought in to transport the food, and easily could have filled 10 more.

"We were so overwhelmed with the support from the community, and we are confident that the team will continue to set goals like this in the future, and give back to our community," exclaimed Sigurdson.