The Student Athlete Advisory Committee or SAAC as they are more commonly known is a committee made up of members from each NCAA sports team. SAAC committees are common throughout the Northwest Conference. SAAC member softball player Aryn Grause (Corvallis, Ore.) explains, “Every NCAA school has a Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and each one acts and performs a little differently than the next school. But here, SAAC is a committee that consists of two representatives from all 22 varsity teams on Campus. We meet biweekly. We vote on legislation (mostly rules) within the conference and the Division III level.
Together, SAAC meets and has fundraisers like the “24 Hours for Special Olympics” which took place at the Women’s Basketball game against Whitworth Friday, February 4 and the men’s basketball game against Whitworth Saturday February 5.
“One of our main focuses here at UPS is to be more involved within the community. We have big events throughout the year and within that we try to promote UPS athletics to the community so we receive more support. To plan these events we split up into sub-committees and each plan a event. Ideally each subcommittee is made up of athletes that are not in season during that event so then each member of the sub-committee can delegate more time to the event.”
Grause along with Senior golfer Sarah Bicker (Salt Lake City, Utah) co-chaired the event that aimed to raise $1,500 for the Special Olympics of Washington. Grause remembers how they came up with the idea, “As a group we brainstormed quite a bit at a meeting. Chris McDonald actually came up with cleverly turning the 1 day fundraiser into a 24-hour fundraiser. The entire group loved the idea and then everything else was handed off to the sub-committee. We were not really sure what exactly we had done for the fundraiser last year so we started fresh this year. We tried to find activities for the entire campus and community to be involved in. That is how we came up with all the mini events”
Last weekend’s fundraiser for Special Olympics involved a raffle with gift baskets prepared by each of the sports teams on campus, “pie-ing” professors in the face, a half court shoot off, and a number of other fun fundraising activities. All the proceeds raised at this event go towards Special Olympics of Washington.
Not only is Puget Sound raising money for Special Olympics but the other teams in the Northwest Conference are having fundraisers too. This has turned into a spirited competition between the 9 schools to raise the most money for each of their charities. The Loggers hope to win some bragging rights this year… last year they fell just short of winning the competition.