By: Chris Long

What started out as one senior swimmer’s idea quickly become an all-out war. This war however is not negative at all; on the contrary it will benefit fellow Heritage students this holiday season. In late November the National Technical Honor Society announced that a food drive would start in early December to benefit Heritage students in need of food over the holidays. The original idea of the food drive was to be a competition between grade levels; however, the competition quickly switched to the Heritage sports teams. It all started when senior swim team captain Madison Saunders shared her idea with the swim coach.

“I saw a need and decided to do something about it. How can we expect students to perform at the highest level and they’re not being fed?” Saunders asked. She and Coach Overton asked the swim team to bring in as many items of food for the food drive as possible. For the swim team it took off from there. Coach Overton added some incentives, including having a fun practice the day before Christmas break if enough items were reached.

Those incentives were quickly shattered.

In only about four days the team had a collection of over 230 items. Already achieving the fun practice, the team continued, especially when the war began. On December 4th, athletic director Pat Kennedy announced that the team with the most items donated would get $1,000 in their account for the coach to use as they choose.

The rest of the teams jumped into action. On the morning of December 10th, thousands of items were dropped off in the small gym as the totals for many of the other teams surged. By mid-morning three leaders emerged: the softball team, the swim team, and the soccer team. In the early afternoon it was announced that the swim team took home the prize after bringing in 1,719 items for the food drive. The girls’ soccer team, because of an apparent miscount of the number of items, also received the prize. In total, more than 7,000 items were brought in for the food drive from the football, boys’ lacrosse, girls’ soccer, softball, cross country, cheerleading, baseball, and swimming teams.

Collection continued for the entire school until Wednesday December 16th.