JMU Sport Clubs Fall in Love with Harrisonburg

Sport Club students volunteered at Booksavers of VA, where they were put to work organizing and recycling old books.

During the Fall semester of 2012, the Sport Club Council organized a day of service for sport club members, titled “FALL In Love With Harrisonburg.” The goal of the event was to bring sport club members together, allowing them to complete their community service requirement while giving back to the Harrisonburg community.

This year, the tradition continued. The second annual “FALL In Love With Harrisonburg” took place on Saturday, October 26, 2013. The SCC expanded the program, finding new volunteer sites in order to allow for more participants. Sites included:

• The Mercy House
• Harrisonburg Children's Museum
• Rockingham Daycare
• Booksavers/Gift and Thrift
• The Gus Bus
• Camp Still Meadows
• Skyline Literacy
• University Park
• RISE

Students received the opportunity to go behind the scenes at several Harrisonburg organizations and help out. Volunteers were placed with members of other sport clubs in order to foster a community between teams; many participants mentioned that they enjoyed meeting new students from other clubs.

“In hindsight, I’m glad we couldn’t sign up as a team.  The sport club members who I worked with were fantastic.  I only knew one person of the 20 people I was working with, but everyone was extremely friendly, funny, and fun to work with.” - Jack Haeberle, Club Tae Kwon Do

Students participated in a variety of different ways. Club members worked both inside and outside, with both kids and adults. Tasks ranged from sorting books, painting, landscaping and facilitating activities for children.

The participants worked vigorously at their sites and the organizations were happy to receive the help. Wonshé, the Events and Volunteer Coordinator at Our Community Place shared thoughts about her experience: “Wow, thank you so much! It was fabulous having you folks help us out. Everyone seemed eager and ready to go on such an early cold morning. Everyone's participation went smoothly and was truly helpful to us.”

Many of the students found their organizations and tasks to be interesting and fun. The SCC heard from several sites regarding the volunteers’ positive attitudes and their receptiveness to the jobs they were assigned: “All of my volunteers were great! I had 8 kids and they all seemed to really enjoy what they were doing. The two that were sorting were really into it, they found an old yearbook from the town that one of them was from. The the students who worked with the recycling process thought that the machine was a lot of fun and did a great job of separating the paper. The few that were looking up non-isbns found a book that was worth $250, which blew their minds. All in all it was a fun day and we got a whole lot done!” - Amy Rohrer, Booksavers Team Leader, Booksavers of Virginia/Gift & Thrift

All JMU sport club members are required to complete specific community service requirements over the course of the semester or year. FALL In Love With Harrisonburg is a fun way to complete those requirements, while meeting new people and giving back to the city of Harrisonburg.

Written by: Brett Woodward, Sport Club Council Vice President