March 26, 2008

In an effort to highlight the leadership and good works of the student-athletes in the conference, the ACC SAAC began the SAAC in ACCtion initiative to provide on-line articles about the SAAC programs at the league's 12 member institutions. The goal of this initiative is to shed light on the great things our student-athletes are doing to affect significant positive change on campus and in our communities. Every two weeks, the SAAC leaders from a different school will provide a SAAC in ACCtion update on how their program is getting involved. When reading these articles, we hope that it is evident that their efforts to give back result in so much more.

"Our SAAC members embody the ideals of pride, passion, respect and responsibility." --Abby Hasebroock
Boston College's SAAC Web Site Senior volleyball player Abby Hasebroock is the vice president for community service of Boston College's SAAC, as well as a representative to the ACC SAAC. Hasebroock took a few minutes to chat with theACC.com about SAAC's initiatives and her experiences. What is the overall goal of Boston College's SAAC? Our SAAC members embody the ideals of pride, passion, respect and responsibility. Those are our four main goals. We want to involve as many student-athletes as possible so we can create awareness on campus, generate excitement about our ideas and reach out to the greater community with care, compassion and dedicated service. How is your SAAC set up? We have an elected president and vice president who relay information between SAAC and the administration. There are several other vice presidents, too, (who are in charge of various areas) including special events and community service - which is my position. We have a general election where anyone who feels they would like to be an officer can be nominated. (For the general members,) we don't have an official representative from every team, but we ask that the captains come to our meetings to get at least one member from every team. What community service activities does SAAC perform on a recurring basis? We have the H.E.A.R. program, which is "Helping Education Through Athletic Responsibility." It's a program that brings student-athletes to the local elementary and middle schools to talk about life choices, motivation and inspiration. We (also) have the Pen Pal program, which pairs student-athletes with local elementary school students to exchange letters monthly. At the end of the year, we invite all the students to Boston College for a field day on the football field for games and pizza. We have a few others that we do monthly. We visit the Franciscan Hospital for Children and Boston Children's Hospital. We usually bring T-shirts and BC gear as gifts for the patients. What events tend to be the favorite among the student-athletes? Visiting the Franciscan and Boston Children's hospitals and the Pen Pal picnic. We really like interacting with kids, and the kids adore us and are in awe when we go to see them. What big events are planned for the remainder of this semester? Our main community service event that we're working on now is fundraising and basically collecting man-labor. We're going to go to local elementary schools and give them paint touch-ups in their gyms and better their playgrounds. Last year, we had our first student-athlete dance and we're doing that again this year because it was a success. We got that idea from another ACC school. That's something I've learned as an ACC representative - we go to the (conference) meetings and come away with ideas that we've never thought of before. Exchanging ideas and being a liaison to our schools is really cool. It's fun to see those ideas come to light and actually work. What student-athlete welfare issues is SAAC currently focusing on? We're working on re-evaluating our advising and registration system. Student-athletes express a lot of frustration with registering for classes because it's tough to coordinate around practice schedules. We have over 800 student-athletes on 31 varsity teams, so it's a challenge to meet everybody's needs. We're not necessarily working toward priority registration, but coming up with the best advising system to meet the most demands. How did you personally get involved with SAAC? I did a lot of community service in high school, (including) Habitat for Humanity, The Salvation Army, a children's hospital and a soup kitchen. I really wanted to stay involved but become more creative with the type of volunteer work I was doing. By working with student-athletes, I thought that it's a really unique experience. I decided I wanted to focus on community service (with SAAC), so I spearheaded a couple of fundraisers and collection of used athletic equipment to donate to primary schools. We've collected shoes and sent them to the Boston Footcare Clinic for the Homeless. I just wanted SAAC to be a creative outlet and to utilize the resources around us to help the underserved. How do you feel your time on Boston College's SAAC and as a representative to the ACC SAAC will help you after graduation? I plan on going into secondary education and I believe that in teaching and coaching, two important factors are passion and (being able to) relate. I come from a family of eight kids so I've always liked working with younger people. Being in SAAC has helped me clearly articulate my ideas and get others excited about them and it's something I'd like to continue to work on. If there was something you'd like the public to know about BC's SAAC or its student-athletes, what would it be? I think that the Jesuit ideals that pervade Boston College's culture are especially prevalent among our student-athletes because the service we do is entirely voluntary. It's amazing to see people's talents come to light off the playing field, too. SAAC brings together the best of the best, in my opinion, and Boston College has helped shaped really great characters. There's no doubt that the people who graduate from here will have a huge sense of pride and be willing to return.