Community service is one of the main focuses of the Lion Athletics Association, which is reflected in their mission statement “Excellence in the classroom, in the community, and in competition.”
In the community, the Lions accumulated over 6,000 hours of community service in the 2016-2017 season winning the Southland Conference community service award “Southland Strong.”
“Serving those in need is something we build into our culture here at Southeastern,” said cross country Head Coach Corey Mistretta.
Men’s basketball redshirt senior Jabbar Singleton explained why he participates in community service.
“We do community service just to give back to the community and, you know, just to help the less fortunate,” said Singleton. “We do community services because we enjoy being around people and making them feel better.”
Cross country freshman Adam Cortez had his own reason for being involved.
“I think that it is truly important as an out-of-state athlete to really try and give back because the school, coaching staff and everybody here has helped me a lot here and have given me a lot of opportunities,” said Cortez. “So, I think that by giving back in whatever way I can, I think that helps a lot. It always helps to spread a positive image in front of the school and team because at the end of the day, the student athlete works to represent the school.”
Cortez explained some recent voluntary works they did.
“In the track team, we take a small group, and we’ve been to two elementary schools, and we just walked around, talked to students, and we ran on their first day of class,” said Cortez. “I’m also on the Southeastern Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, so I helped in the ‘Gumbo Ya Ya’ couple of weeks ago. I was one of the servers for about two hours out there.”
Both athletes explained how often they did community service.
“My first two weeks here we were doing it, was sporadic,” said Cortez. “But with the S.A.A.C team, I probably end up doing it every couple of weeks.”
The athletes do community service as much as they possibly can.
“We try to do community services at least every month and sometimes even two times a month,” said Singleton. “Whenever we get time off, whenever we have a break, we do community service.”
Singleton explained how he manages to balance time between practice, classes and community services.
“Our community service is always before practice or after practice,” said Singleton. “Our basketball schedule is actually scheduled around our classes. So, we have time to practice and do community services.”
Cortez provided future athletes advice on how to manage the time.
“My best advice would just be to really make a routine,” said Cortez. “It is difficult to manage all of the things when you have something you have on a daily basis. It’s just about building a routine and really staying on top of everything and not letting work build up.”
The athletes volunteer wherever necessary.
“We just go to different places,” said Singleton. “We go to places where we feel our help would be needed. For example, the flood relief. We helped the people affected by the flood. So, whenever we feel like helping people, we just go there and do it as a team.”
Organizations seeking help can visit the Athletic Department at 800 Galloway Drive, Hammond, LA or call them at (985) 549-2253. The department also donates to various charities through a charitable donation request form that can be found at www.lionsports.net.