Concerned for the hungry

On a crisp, sunny Saturday this past weekend, the Skidmore College Baseball team gathered in the parking lot of the Presbyterian New England Congregational Church on Circular Street in Saratoga Springs, where the Saratoga County Economic Opportunity Council (EOC) had established its Thanksgiving command post.

It was the morning after a Friday night spent overseeing one of the team’s popular “Kids Night Out.” During KNO, area children (100 or so on Nov. 21) pay a modest fee for admission to Williamson Sports Center, where they participate in all manner of athletic endeavors under the supervision of baseball team members. The program, in effect for the past decade, helps the college students raise funds for their spring break trip while allowing local children the chance to enjoy the sports center’s facilities.

However, on Saturday at the church, there were no children to supervise. Instead, the athletes were among approximately three dozen volunteers packing Thanksgiving food baskets under the direction of Lillian McCarthy, EOC director of community services programming. First up:  bagging a load of apples provided by an area farmer. The truckload of produce needed to be sorted and bagged into family-sized allotments, so the athletes went to work.

Later in the morning, they applied the same skills to a pallet of fresh carrots, breaking down huge bags into smaller portions to be added to baskets of holiday food.

The baskets were collated inside the church, which serves during the week as the local soup kitchen. On this day, the dining facility had been repurposed. Large tables, laden with cans and boxes of traditional holiday fare, formed a rectangle. On orders from EOC staff, volunteers walked a path around the tables, adding food to a bag destined for a local family. The amount of items in each bag depended on the ultimate recipient, with bags prepared for families ranging from two to eight people. The volunteers put together a total of 766 bags of food in just under two hours. The bags will be picked up over the next few days at the EOC headquarters in Ballston Spa.

Throughout the morning, when heavy lifting or extra effort was needed, McCarthy called out, “Athletes! I need you!” She later said, “I don’t know what I would do without Coach Ron Plourde and his team—they are my muscle for this operation.” In addition to sorting and bagging food, team members helped set up and break down the work space.

Plourde said he and the student-athletes have participated in food basket preparation for the past six years, even on mornings after a late-evening Kids Night Out. “These projects are not an option,” the coach explained. “Community service and Kids Night Out are a requirement. It’s what we do,” he added. This year, the team had an extra, pint-sized helper: Plourde’s six-year-old son, Michael, one of about six younger volunteers on site.

By about 11 a.m., the holiday food preparations were completed, the soup kitchen was back in business, and the volunteers dispersed after making Thanksgiving 2014 possible for nearly 800 Saratoga County families.