Sept. 27, 2010

BERKELEY - Instead of spending their Saturday studying, sleeping or hanging out with friends, roughly 40 California student-athletes participated in the annual Coastal Clean-Up Day. The Golden Bears joined 1,400 other Bay Area residents to pick up trash at the Berkeley marina.

Track and field's Kiely Smith and women's water polo senior Laura Wood, the Bear Student-Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC) community outreach chairs, coordinated student-athlete participation for the event.

"One of our main goals in Bear SAAC this year is to be involved with a variety of outreach activities," Wood said. "We thought this would be a great way to give back to the community. We're lucky to live in such a beautiful place as the Bay Area and we were doing our part to keep it beautiful. It was great to see so many Bears come out and give up their weekend to volunteer."

Every year in September, more than half-a-million people in 100 countries remove millions of pounds of trash from beaches and waterways all over the world thanks to Ocean Conservancy, which organizes the event. This year's clean-up was the 25th annual International Coastal Cleanup.

Members from women's soccer, lacrosse, men's and women's gymnastics, track and field as well as women's water polo players were in attendance Saturday.

"I did it because I feel that we have a responsibility to keep our environment clean for wild life and future generations," Cal women's soccer junior defender Danielle Brunache said.