SELINSGROVE—A new program because of the pandemic is helping a popular local playground. The Susquehanna University Football team has been doing work at Kidsgrove in Selinsgrove, taking out bushes, staining wood, and making repairs.
During spring quarantine, SU’s Special Teams Special Teams Coordinator and Secondary Coach Alan Zemaitis was thinking of ways to get his hands to help our community, and to use the football to aid in those efforts. So, Zemaitis developed “SOS” or “Season of Service.”
“Not having a season, in my eyes, is not going to stop the development of men and what we do within our football program. We hope that we can make people smile and laugh the same way as if we were playing football,” Zemaitis said.
The football coach sat down with some folks at Susquehanna and brainstormed what the team could do to help the community, especially to develop some meaningful conversations around diversity. Two weeks ago, the team started working at Kidsgrove to give the park a facelift. So far, they’ve done some weeding, bush removal, and replanted the Kidsgrove sign. Some have never done work like this before, but experience like this will come in handy:
“It’s great just to see them learn how to take care of community areas and basically roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty and learning how to do landscaping for some day they might have their own home and their own family and they’re going to be doing the same thing,” Zemaitis said.
Zemaitis was recently on WKOK Sunrise. You can hear the full interview at wkok.com.
