BATON ROUGE – LSU student-athletes, athletic trainers, cheerleaders, Tiger Girls and Mike the Tiger came together to give back to the community for the school’s annual holiday event “Thanksgiving with the Tigers” Monday at the Maravich Center.
Previously known as “Christmas with the Tigers”, the event was coordinated by the LSU’s Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and the Cox Communications Academic Center for Student-Athlete Affairs.
“This time of year is all about giving, and the Thanksgiving with the Tigers event allows our student-athletes to give back to the community that gives so much to them,” Assistant Director for Diversity, Inclusion, and Civic Engagement Jade Bryan said. “This particular event was all about welcoming these 21 kids and their mothers to campus. The student-athletes did a magnificent job of taking them all in and having a night of fun.”
Each LSU team was given the opportunity to adopt an underprivileged child through St. Vincent de Paul for the evening. Each adopted child ate a Thanksgiving meal with their team as well as received gifts in the spirit of the holiday season.
After the meal, the student-athletes and kids played games like basketball, hula hoop and parachute in the Maravich Center.
“My team had so much fun getting to hang out with the girl we adopted and getting to see her face as we watched her open the gifts we got her,” SAAC president and junior volleyball player Madie Jones said. “It feels good getting to make a difference in someone’s life even if it’s just one girl.”
In total, LSU athletics helped 21 children experience the true essence of what the holiday season is about.
“It is a blessing to hear a kid say I always wanted one of these ‘bikes’ and the look he had on his face when I told him the bike was for him,” sophomore safety Craig Loston said. “It’s small things like that, that make me want to always help because it’s a good feeling to make a kid smile and that’s what I enjoy doing.”