The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) held a canned food drive at Ragan-Brown Field House during the men’s basketball game on Saturday, Nov. 22, starting an hour before the match began and running through the end of the game.

SAAC connects each college to its conference and to the NCAA. Members meet to discuss and vote on guidelines and regulations the NCAA plans to implement. At the campus level, SAAC also works with the Guilford Student Body Association (GSBA) to ensure student-athletes’ needs are met.

“It gives us a voice to be able to advocate for what we want as student athletes,” said Victoria Harper, SAAC secretary.

SAAC also organizes fundraisers and events to increase student engagement with athletics. One example is Guilford’s annual Soup Bowl, a competition between Guilford and Greensboro College to boost collections for the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) food drive. This year’s competition became more collaborative between the two schools, Harper noted.

Guilford also turns the Soup Bowl into an inter-sport contest, encouraging each team to collect as many cans as possible. The men’s basketball team won this year with 98 cans per person, according to SAAC President Kelsey Buie.

“Every year, we try to beat what our numbers were last year,” Harper said. “I believe our number last year was in the 9,000s.”

This year, Guilford’s final Soup Bowl tally was around 11,000 cans. With the cutoff for the ODAC food drive approaching this weekend, SAAC hopes this final campus-wide food drive will help them secure first place.

“We usually end up pretty decent. We’ve ended up second for most of the time,” Buie said. “Our goal is to win it this year.”

SAAC accepts more than just canned soup. Any nonperishable items—ramen, boxed macaroni and cheese and more—are welcomed, said Sarah Matthews, SAAC faculty advisor and women’s basketball coach.

Specific items the group is prioritizing this year include canned potatoes, beans, fruits and vegetables, peanut butter and soup, according to Buie and Harper.

Food drive donations go to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC, a Feeding America partner headquartered in Winston-Salem. Second Harvest serves 18 counties in northwestern North Carolina through more than 500 food assistance programs. It also stocks local food pantries and advocates for food security.

While most items will go to Second Harvest, SAAC plans to donate part of the collection to the Quaker Cupboard on campus. Earlier this semester, their donation “overwhelmed” the pantry, Buie said, so SAAC also plans to distribute items to additional food banks in the Greensboro area.

Buie said SAAC plans to hold another food drive for Second Harvest in the spring to help combat the drop in donations that food banks typically see after the holidays. They have also discussed hosting more community outreach events.

“We’ve also talked about potentially… for kids with disabilities or who can’t afford to play sports, having a day in the gym where each sport has a station,” Buie said. “It gives them an opportunity to meet college [athletes] that might give them hope of playing sports.”