BATON ROUGE — Members of the LSU swimming and diving team visited the children’s ward at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center on Thursday evening as part of the Shaquille O’Neal CHAMPS/Life Skills program.
Nine members of the team made visits to the children in the hospital. The players brought smiles to the children and teenagers in the hospital as they made visits to their individual rooms. They also talked with the patients parents, signed autographs and passed out temporary tattoos.
The hospital visits 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.