BATON ROUGE — Member of the LSU women’s soccer and softball teams will be participating in the annual Westdale Elementary School Book Fair, while members of the track and field teams will be visiting the children’s ward at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital.
The soccer team will be reading to students at Westdale Elementary, located on College Drive, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, while the softball team will be at the school on Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. as part of the school’s annual book fair.
The track and field team will be at OLOL on Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. to talk with the children and participate in games. LSU has worked very closely with the children’s ward over the past few years to get student-athletes involved with the hospital.
The activities are sponsored by the Shaquille O’Neal CHAMPS/Life Skills program. The CHAMPS (Challenging Athletes Minds for Personal Success)/Life Skills Program was designed by the NCAA to help student-athletes realize higher academic achievement, increase likelihood of graduation and enter a chosen profession with a higher level of vision, knowledge, motivation, self-responsibility and greater overall success. In Spring 2003, the CHAMPS/Life Skills Program at LSU honored one of the Tigers’ most memorable graduates, Shaquille O’Neal, by naming the program after him.