April 21, 2011

Special Olympics Highlight Video

BERKELEY - California student-athletes, through the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), have been very involved in giving back to the Berkeley community. Most recently, the Golden Bears helped by distributing lunches to the homeless and hosting a Special Olympics basketball skills clinic.

SAAC worked with the Special Olympics to host a basketball skills clinic at Haas Pavilion on March 13. SAAC representatives helped run individual skills competitions in addition to activity stations where the Special Olympics athletes could work on their passing, dribbling, defense and shooting skills. Cal basketball players Jorge Gutierrez and Rachel Federico also entertained kids with a 3-point shooting competition. The day ended with the student-athletes teaching the kids some of the Cal cheers and taking time to sign autographs for everyone.

All of the Pac-10 institutions made it a goal to participate in community events hosted by the Special Olympics this year. The Bears look forward to staying involved with the organization and helping at more events in the future.

On April 15, student-athletes created and distributed 125 "SAAC" lunches to the homeless in the Berkeley community. The Bears used donations from Sysco Foods and Costco to assemble the brown bag lunches before heading out on the streets to pass them out.

"It was a blast helping out people in our community," women's basketball sophomore Talia Caldwell said. "SAAC lunches are epic meals for epic people!"

The tasty meals were delivered to the residents of People's Park and the surrounding streets of Berkeley. This was the second year in a row that the SAAC has been involved with distributing lunches to the homeless in Berkeley. All of the student-athletes had a great time and look forward to making "SAAC" lunches a yearly tradition going forward to give back to the Berkeley community that supports them.