USAAC’s toy donation boxes at home basketball games 

Kush Aggarwal ‘28

STAFF WRITER

This winter, the Unionville Student Athletic Advisory Council (USAAC) was hard at work running a toy drive to support the Community Youth and Women’s Alliance in Coatesville, a nonprofit organization for the betterment of youth, women, and moms in the community. They set up boxes in the gym lobby for their toy drive at home basketball games during the month of December, and additionally, asked representatives of all winter sports teams to encourage their teams to bring in toys. USAAC wants to especially thank the Unionville Crew team for bringing in the most toys to donate.

USAAC is a student organization composed of Unionville student-athletes. Senior Austin Edmunds, a student leader of USAAC, says, “Each person is picked for their respective sport because of their leadership skills and ability to represent their sport.” The committee meets monthly to complete leadership development activities. During their monthly meetings, they also plan for the ESPYs, a major sports awards night held in the spring and have recently started using more time to organize philanthropic events to improve their community, such as the recent toy drive. Mr. Joe Vogler, the athletics director, says they act as a “bridge between the student-athlete voice and the administration, similar to how student council is the voice of the students,” as they work for the betterment of our school’s athletics and our community.

Senior Fiona Avondolio, the president of USAAC, says this year they “wanted to add more community service elements to USAAC, so all members must complete 10 hours of sports-related community service,” in addition to the recent toy drive.Some examples of this include volunteering with URA and helping at games. This year’s emphasis on community service has been making an impact, with the introduction of major philanthropic events like the toy drive, and they hope to organize more events like this in the future.

This year’s toy drive was a great success, and thanks to donations at the home basketball games, as well as donations from the winter sports teams, the Community Youth and Women’s Alliance was gifted with a substantial number of toys this winter. Although this year’s toy drive is now over, Mr. Vogler predicts they will be doing another one next winter, so look out for advertisements next November and December for information on how to donate. USAAC encourages everyone to donate in future fundraisers and events, and thanks everyone who donated to the toy drive for their efforts in making our community a better place!