BATON ROUGE — Members of LSU baseball and tennis teams participated in the “Clippin’ for Katrina” head shaving drive near the Union on Friday afternoon.
Pitcher Clay Dirks from the baseball team and Danny Bryan from the tennis team both had their head shaved to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. Representatives from the Aveda Institute were on hand to shave heads in Free Speech Alley in front of the LSU Union for $12 to raise money for the home building organization.
Dirks, a member of the 2006 Wallace Award Watch List, is a junior left-hander from Hernando, Miss. He was a 2005 second-team all-SEC selection as he posted a 10-4 record and a 3.24 ERA with 67 strikeouts and 27 walks in 94.1 innings. In 2004 he earned Freshman All-America and Freshman All-SEC recognition and was named National Pitcher of the Week after hurling a four-hit shutout on against Tulane.
A 2005 first-team All-Louisiana selection, Bryan is a native of New Orleans. He posted an 18-5 record in singles dual matches last season. In addition, he went undefeated in 12 doubles duel matches with his partner, Colt Gaston.
Founded in 1976, Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry. It seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action. Habitat invites people of all backgrounds, races and religions to build houses together in partnership with families in need.
Habitat has built more than 200,000 houses around the world, providing more than 1,000,000 people in more than 3,000 communities with safe, decent, affordable shelter. HFHI was founded in 1976 by Millard Fuller along with his wife Linda.
Habitat for Humanity launched Operation Home Delivery in response to Hurricane Katrina’s effect on the Gulf South. The program is designed to help the hardest-hit Habitat affiliates to get back on their feet and be prepared to build houses in their communities.
The program will also serve as a catalyst for other organizations, corporations, foundations, governments and individuals to come together to talk about low-income housing on a scale Habitat alone cannot accomplish and Implement a house-building project.
In the initial phases, Habitat affiliates in other parts of the United States will “pre-build” housing components, package them in a container and ship them to the Gulf Coast to be permanently set up when infrastructure is in place. Regular, long-term rebuilding will expand as time passes and the region redevelops.