BRIDGEWATER, VA. – Bridgewater College’s student organizations, athletic teams, and faculty departments competed to donate the most non-perishable items in the annual campus food drive that ran from October 13 through 31.
Benjamin Erickson, senior instructor of communication studies/theatre and director of community engagement, said that last year Bridgewater College donated over 3000 items.
“Every food item you get one point. And for every non-food item, like toiletry item, you get three points,” Erickson said. “Depending on how many people your team has, we divide that by the number of points you have and that’s your points per person.”
Erickson said that toiletry items are worth more points because they are highly needed items and more expensive to buy.
Laurel Edwards, community engagement intern, said that field hockey placed first with a total of 2338 points, swim was second with 1697 points and cheerleading took third with a total of 372 points.
“The biggest thing that sticks out is that there was a different winner than there has been in previous years,” Edwards said. “They did just win by a little bit. You could tell that they were really hungry to win.”
Gwynn Harrison, Bridgewater athletics’ Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) advisor and head coach of the men’s and women’s swim program, said the food drive is a competition between all Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) schools.
According to the ODAC website, last year all the schools donated a combined total of 39,000 non-perishable items to their choice of local organization. Averett University won for the second year in a row and totaled over 10,000 donations alone last year.
Erickson said that Bridgewater College’s donations go to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which distributes the items to local pantries.
According to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank’s website, the organization helps over 170,000 people every month throughout 25 counties in central and western Virginia.
Harrison said that since Erickson started involvement with the food drive three years ago, he has expanded the competition outside the athletic department to the entire school.
“I’m trying to find more opportunities for students to participate on stuff on campus so they don’t have to go off campus to do service-type things,” Erickson said.
Edwards said that the Nolan, Coffman and Rhodes schools each contributed at least 500 points.
“It was cool to see the non-athletic organizations get involved,” Edwards said.
Harrison said that Erickson had a great idea to start including more than just non-perishable food items in the food drive such as toiletries.
“While food is obviously important,” Harrison said. “ A lot of times people don’t have those basic items.”
Edwards said she hopes to see the campus participation in the food drive increase over the next few years.
“I feel like we had really good participation this year, “ Edwards said. “I hope to see even more teams be involved next year since this program does so much for the community.”
