CSU athletics comes together, donates items for hurricane victims

What started as an early-morning email from Columbus State women’s basketball coach Anita Howard became something much bigger on Wednesday.

The entire Columbus State athletic department joined together to gather supplies and necessities for those affected by Hurricane Harvey. After Howard shared her team’s plan to donate items, all of the other Cougars’ and Lady Cougars’ programs pitched in as well.

“On social media, there’s a lot of college coaches talking about the colleges coming together to help the University of Houston by sending stuff to them to give to the people out in Texas,” Howard said. “If it was our student-athletes who were displaced, we would want somebody to help us. With short notice, everybody came around.”

The result was an array of items carefully arranged on Columbus State’s Lumpkin Center floor by Wednesday afternoon.

Along with t-shirts featuring logos of all the CSU teams plus the sports medicine department were other clothing items such as socks and shoes. Soap, towels, toothbrushes, toilet paper and feminine hygiene products made up portions of the pile, as did diapers, bags, canned goods and bed linens.

“They asked what they should bring, and I said, ‘What would you need if you didn’t have anything or anywhere to go? You would need everything,’” Howard said. “We think we’ve got everything they would need.”

Hurricane Harvey first hit the Texas coast on Friday, August 25. The New York Times reported that local officials said at least 38 deaths have occurred either related or suspected to be related to the storm since that time. More than 32,000 people have been relocated to shelters within the state.

Howard said the plan is for a Red Cross truck to collect the items and send them directly to Houston, which would likely happen Monday. She said more items will be gathered from now until that time, with the entire campus pitching in to add to the supplies.

Columbus State athletic director Todd Reeser was pleased with the efforts made by the school’s coaches and players in such a short span of time.

“It’s about coming together for the people who are thoughts and prayers go out to,” Reeser said. “If there’s some way we could assist, we want to do that. It’s gratifying to know we have great kids and a staff that gets behind something so very important. When there’s need, we all need to pull together and help out.”

Toxiana Wilson, a junior forward for the Lady Cougars basketball team, was among those who helped out.

Wilson said she was saddened by what she’s seen in and around Houston and said she would have loved to help in the affected areas if she could. She was particularly struck by the amount of kids who were suddenly left homeless, which made assisting in her school’s efforts mean that much more to her.

Wilson said she was pleasantly surprised by the entire athletic department joining in to donate. Those efforts, in her mind, spoke to the weight that she and her fellow student-athletes can carry by their actions.

In this case, it was about helping those who Howard deemed “our extended family.”

“We do have a voice. It just depends on how we use it,” Wilson said. “It’s one of those ways to show that it’s not just about basketball or being a student-athlete. We care about our community, our country and making a difference. We did that today.”

This story was originally published August 30, 2017 at 6:12 PM with the headline "CSU athletics comes together, donates items for hurricane victims."