BATON ROUGE — A trio of LSU softball student-athletes will participate in the St. Clare Nursing Home Mardi Gras parade on Friday afternoon as part of the Shaquille O’Neal CHAMPS/Life Skills program.
The players will ride in the nursing home’s parade and throw out beads at 2 p.m. this afternoon. St. Clare Nursing home is located at 7435 Bishop Ott Drive in Baton Rouge.
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 honored one of LSU’s most memorable graduates, Shaquille O’Neal, by naming the program after him.