BATON ROUGE — LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri participated with Lanier Elementary School students Monday morning in “Real Men Read,” a program instituted by the East Baton Rouge Parish School System.
Mainieri read selected books to the students and led discussion groups that reviewed the texts. He stressed to the students the importance of reading, and he signed autographs near the end of the session.
“Coach Mainieri was so great today with the kids,” said Sonya Gordon, public information officer for the school system. “It was a real pleasure having him, and his participation is valued by everyone.”
“Real Men Read” is a program that brings men from the local community into schools to read to students. The purpose of the activity is to ignite in males the excitement of reading. Bridging positive role models from the community with young males in elementary schools through the mode of reading provides a powerful opportunity to encourage lifelong practices related to the power and purpose of reading.
Mainieri and his LSU players have made a strong commitment to community service. He is personally involved in several philanthropic causes, as he works with Cancer Services of Baton Rouge, Prevent Child Abuse and the McMains Development Center for Children.
The baseball squad logged 345 hours of community service during the 2007-08 academic year, the most of any of LSU’s men’s sports teams.