Athletic department sends Bobcat flying discs to children in Afghanistan

The GCSU Athletic Department recently sent 50 Bobcat flying discs to be distributed by the U.S. Army to children in Afghanistan.

The good deed began when Steve Barsby, GCSU assistant athletic director and head tennis coach, made a trip to Walmart. While there, he met Russell Bloodworth, whose son, Neal, is stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Bloodworth was searching for sporting goods to send to his son overseas to be passed out to children in his unit’s area.

“Along with distributing medicine, setting up schools and all that sort of stuff, one of the things that (U.S. soldiers) do is distribute sporting goods just to keep the kids active and give them something fun to probably put a smile on a very sad situation,” said Al Weston, GCSU sports information director.

Bloodworth explained the situation to Barsby, who was able to give him some of the new flying discs the athletic department had purchased this year.

“They were just talking back and forth and (Bloodworth) said, ‘Coach, do you have anything you might be able to part with and send over there?’ I have these Frisbees in my office that we for promotional purposes toss them out at games, getting people off their fannies and excited about Bobcat athletics,” Weston said. “Barsby came into my office, grabbed 50 of those, gave them to the guy, and he shipped them to his son in Afghanistan, and they passed them out.”

The flying discs were distributed by Neal Bloodworth and his unit in the village Barek Aub in February.

The younger Bloodworth is an alumnus of GCSU. He joined the army after graduating in 1986. While attending the school, he was a part of the GC ROTC. He is currently the Base Support Group Commander in Barek Aub for the Headquarters of the International Security Assistance Forces.

“(Bloodworth) mentioned in an e-mail that they had to teach them how to throw Frisbees,” Weston said. “They had never seen Frisbees before. He was pretty sure the next time they came to visit, they would probably be using them as plates just because of how downtrodden the area is. But it was still just neat to play around with the kids for a bit.”

The best part of the experience for Weston was seeing the pictures of the smiling kids and their new flying discs.

“I was like, holy cow, look at what these kids are putting up with and how happy they’d be about just a simple thing like a Frisbee that I’m throwing away at every basketball game basically,” Weston said. “My dog has one of them at home that he’s chewed up. I could have taken that and I could have thrown it in a box and put a smile on another kid’s face over there.”

Megan Smith, a junior biology major, thought that the flying discs were put to good use.

“We have so many Frisbees in our school,” Smith said. “People constantly give out Frisbees and how many of those Frisbees do we have just probably sitting in our room, doing nothing with them. It’s weird how we take things like that for granted. We get it and we’re like, ‘oh yeah, it’s a Frisbee. I got something for free.’ We don’t usually think of it as anything that great.”

Kelli McLane, a junior psychology major and soccer player, is also a supporter of the athletic department sending over the flying discs.

“I think it’s fantastic,” McLane said. “We watched a video about Iraq saying kids are getting more and more involved in sports, but they don’t necessarily have the equipment needed. I think Frisbees is just a start and I hope we continue to help them.”

McLane will be traveling to Guyana in July as a part of a sports ministry. She is planning to bring soccer balls to give to the kids she meets.

The athletic department has done other charity work in the past, but has kept it on a local scale.

“We get involved with multiple areas locally,” Weston said. “We’ll go and speak at phys ed. classes at elementary schools about being healthy in general. We’ll go and read to a third grade class at Blandy Hills Elementary, too. We’ve been there a couple of times. There are some classes and things that will come to campus. For a week, they’ll learn how to play basketball from our women’s basketball team. Things like that, but nothing this quite globally spread.”

Posted by Courtney Murrah on Apr 2 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry