It was certainly a winning weekend for the Alabama Crimson Tide. The football won team at Ole Miss while the volleyball squad earned a trio of wins at home in Tuscaloosa and the women’s golf team won the Mason Rudolph Women’s Championship.
The Tide also had a winning weekend in the community as eight teams combined for a Habitat for Humanity work weekend.
The men’s and women’s track and field team got the build going on Friday morning.
“I had the opportunity to work with the future homeowner, painting the siding for her new home,” sophomore distance runner Sarah Mohan said. “She talked a lot about the whole community coming together and helping each other rebuild the houses on her street after the tornadoes came through.
It was really eye opening just seeing how much she’s been through and yet she is so grateful for everything she has.”
Friday afternoon saw the men’s and women’s tennis teams combine with the women’s basketball squad.
“Just being able to give back, and knowing that you are being helpful and providing something for someone else is a big deal for me and definitely for our team,” senior women’s tennis player Joanna Savva said.
The sense of giving back is engrained in Alabama’s student-athletes. The teams worked over the course of two days at the build site that is just two miles from the athletics complex.
“This community does a great job of coming out to support us, so it is nice to be able to give back in ways that we can,” women’s basketball junior forward Ashley Williams said.
The Tide’s efforts in the community are nothing new, but they gained a heightened focus in the months and years that followed the devastating tornado that tore through Tuscaloosa in 2011.
“We have done this every year since I have been here,” men’s tennis player Hayes Brewer said. “I am a senior so this is my fourth time. It’s always fun getting together with the women’s tennis team and the other sports and help out with somebody’s house that got ruined during the tornado a few years ago.”
The gymnastics team got the second day of the work weekend underway bright and early.
“It takes us back, realizing how fortunate and blessed we are in our own lives to have what we do because that is not the case for a lot of people in our community and elsewhere,” junior gymnast Nickie Guerrero said. “It meant a lot to us using our own blessings to help others build back their blessings. Helping Habitat of Humanity and seeing how excited the homeowner was to be building her own home and having so many people volunteer their own time to help build back her own life is so special and we’re happy to do what we can in the community to bring back a blessing to people.”
The Crimson Tide men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams traded their swim goggles for safety glasses and their kickboard for hammers following a grueling Saturday morning practice session. Like the other teams involved, being a part of the Habitat build reinvigorated the student-athletes.
“To me, doing the Habitat build means being involved in a community that is bigger than us,” senior swimmer and president of the UA Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Caroline Korst said. “It is so important to us to give back to the community that gives so much to us. Knowing that what we did this Saturday in some small way helps someone have a place to call home, that means the world to us.”
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