IN THE COMMUNITY THE PROGRAM
SUPPORTING THE COMMUNITY THAT SUPPORTS OU OU lives by a clear and strong motto in dealing with its student-athletes...Inspiring Champions for Today, Preparing Leaders for Tomorrow. To fulfill that promise, the athletics department and student-athletes take an active role in a number of community service projects. Sooner student-athletes are exposed to life outside of sports and school work with opportunities to serve and help others. In conjunction with OU’s CHAMPS/Life Skills Program, all 21 intercollegiate athletics teams participate in community service efforts each month. Each team is awarded points based on community service, involvement with campus activities, and performance in the classroom throughout the academic year and the baseball team recorded the highest mark on campus in 2008. Oklahoma’s student-athletes recognize that wearing the Crimson and Cream means representing a popular sports program and themselves as individuals. They are encouraged to respond to a public that adores them, while learning important lessons about making a positive impact in the lives of others and in the community in which they live. Below is a list of some of the community service efforts that the OU baseball team participates in each year:
SPECIAL SPECTATORS The Special Spectators is a national organization that invites seriously ill children to attend a sporting event and meet the players and coaches. More than 30 children from several Oklahoma City hospitals have been hosted by football, basketball, baseball and gymnastics over the past year. The Sooner baseball team has participated in the event for the past four years. On top of meeting the players and coaches and participating in batting practice, the children throw out the ceremonial first pitch for that day’s game.
WILLOW SPRINGS BOYS RANCH Since 2005, Oklahoma baseball has partnered with the Willow Springs Boys Ranch in Chandler, Okla., to interact with the children and participate in a day of various landscaping duties and team building exercises. The Willow Springs Boys Ranch is a long-term residential childcare facility that accepts applications from boys between the ages 7 to 12 years old. Boys are able to live on the ranch until they graduate from high school, obtain their G.E.D. or participate in an independent living program after graduation. It is the program’s goal to provide an environment where boys can become successful and develop into productive adults.
SOONERS VISIT KENNEDY ELEMENTARY Elliott Blair was one of several Sooners who participated in a weekly program in the fall which features baseball players interacting with children at local elementary schools in various classroom activities.
MIRACLE LEAGUE For each of the last four seasons, the OU baseball team has traveled to Mitch Park in Edmond, Okla., to play in a “Miracle League Game.” The Miracle League, founded in 1997, is an organization that gives special-needs children an opportunity to play baseball. Miracle Leagues across the country play in specialized complexes that include custom-designed fields with cushioned rubberized turf fields that prevent injuries, wheelchair accessible dugouts and a completely flat surface that eliminates any barriers or obstacles for wheelchair bound or visually impaired athletes.
HOLIDAY FOOD DRIVE Founded in 2000 by OU assistant football coach Josh Heupel, various athletics programs, including baseball, participate in the annual Holiday Food Drive. The event has grown to help hundreds of families in Norman over the past nine years. In 2008, the Holiday Food Drive targeted 750 families in eight different communities across Oklahoma.
HABITAT FOR HUMANITY Along with other teams at OU, the Sooner baseball team helped out the local Habitat for Humanity Organization in 2007. The program was founded in 1976 and is designed to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness around the world, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.
28 SoonerSports.com
WILLOW SPRINGS BOYS RANCH - FALL 2009 “It’s been a huge blessing having the baseball team out here today. They’re a lot of similarities in what we do at Willow Springs Boys Ranch and what University of Oklahoma baseball is about,” said J. Todd Vinson, the founder and executive director, last fall.