The team will continue to collect shoes for the next couple of weeks.
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“When you live in Ohio, it’s hard to imagine those kinds of floods and people losing their homes and pets and losing everything,” head coach Ann Vogel said. “It’s a little thing we can do to give back and for the girls, I hope it’s a teaching moment that they can see there are things bigger than them in life.”
The girls on the team do a service project every year, Vogel said, and it typically involves them collecting winter clothing to donate to a local shelter and the school district. The team will likely continue collecting winter clothes, she said, but also wanted to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey.
“We were hoping to wrap it up but there have been so many calls that we are going to keep it going,” she said. “We thought maybe we would do it for a week’s span but we have had a good response.”
The team is looking into also donating to the victims of Hurricane Irma in Florida.
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Senior Taylor Henault said she’s proud of her team for collecting the shoes.
“We got a local business to donate 100 and right now we have 150 and hopefully we will get a few more before we send them out,” she said. “We are runners and a lot of runners lost their shoes during the hurricane and the flooding so we thought that would be the most convenient way to help them.”
Senior Reghan Bieleski said she sympathizes with those who are suffering right now.
“It must be hard for the families down there,” she said.
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She said she hopes the shoes give the victims a sense that things will go back to normal eventually.
Junior Lauren Fowler said she also is happy that her team tackled the challenge.
“We are a very close knit group,” she said. “It’s a like a family.”
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