The devastation that Hurricane Harvey has caused to the southeastern part of Texas is building up to make Harvey one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. The cost of damages has risen to 160 million dollars as predicted by USA Today and an upwards of 40,000 homes have been destroyed as estimated by ABC News.
With Houston being over 1,300 miles away from Slippery Rock it might seem like there is little SRU students can do to help, but the SRU club baseball team did not feel that way.
Fresh off of a national championship, club president Austin Robinson came up with the idea to have a clothes drive early Tuesday afternoon.
“Just looking at the news and seeing everything going on down in Houston, we have a bunch of good guys on the team who always want to help and lend a hand if we can,” Robinson said. “Honestly I just thought of it real quick, put it in our (group chat) and everybody just put it together.”
By Tuesday evening Robinson and club vice president Jonathan Fouts had already finalized the idea and had reserved times for the club to stand outside of Smith Student Center and accept donations.
“It’s something we want to do right now,” Robinson said. “We don’t want to push it off.”
Fout said that with professional athletes like the Houston Texans’ J.J. Watt raising millions of dollars to send in relief, the team wanted to try and help out as much as they could. He said working towards what is best for everyone is the mindset of the team and in part how they were able to win a national championship.
“We’re a group of good guys,” Fouts said. “That’s how we won the national championship, having each other’s back and doing what is best. Piggybacking off of that led to this. ‘How can we help, how can we do better?’ This is our way of reaching out and giving them our hand.”
The team will be collecting old or used clothing donations outside of Smith Student Center Thursday and Friday from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. and on Friday from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
