November 30, 2021 – The WSOY Community Food Drive had many moving parts, and one of those parts was the friendly competition between local schools to raise funds for families experiencing hunger in our community.
The top-5 placed schools in this year’s competition were at this year’s ceremony and the schools placed as follows:
1st place – Mt. Zion
2nd place – St. Patrick
3rd place – St. Teresa
4th place – Eisenhower
5th place – Our Lady of Lourdes
The schools involved made their efforts school-wide, and that made an impression on the teachers and administrators involved to see their students taking the reins. “It’s great! Not only the students work together but the staff gets involved. We all have a friendly competition at school and everybody is looking for their chance to take part in giving to the community.” said Jenny Brummer, Assistant Principal at St. Teresa. Eisenhower Principal Dr. Amy Zahm echoed that sentiment. “We tried to be creative as possible. We involve our staff, our homerooms have competitions. Students participated in dress-up days, we took donations at games, so we try to involve the entire school and reach out to alumni as well.” she said.
When asked what he thinks his students will take away from their involvement in the Community Food Drive, Nicholas Blackburn, Principal of St. Patrick said, “You pray your community, you serve your community, and then you give your time, talent, and treasure to the community to improve it however you can.”
The schools involved range from preschool to high school students. Our Lady of Lourdes students range from preschool through 8th grade and teacher Jim Kralik noted his enjoyment of watching some of the youngest students become enthusiastic about helping. “The lower grades, the younger children are the most enthusiastic. It’s just so fun to watch the kids come in with their bags of groceries every morning and put them in the ever-growing pile.
Mt. Zion had the honor of taking home first place this year and principal Justin Johnson reflected on seeing the amount of effort his students put into the competiton, “Our kids worked really hard. I do think our kids really care and I think our MEDICS club is phenomenal. Mrs. Downs runs our MEDICS club and she does such a great job of helping motivate those kids and they do such a good job of motivating our student body to help give back.”
