The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/10/07 Section: News

Media Credit: SARA GUEVARA Devikiyo Brooks (left), 11, and Lashonda Beasely (center), 11, listen to head football coach Mark Richt read to Hattie Lawson's fifth grade class at Fourth Street Elementary Monday. Richt read as part of the Athletic Association's annual Mission Renewal Day, where members of the University's athletic association did community service work in the Athens community.

Media Credit: SAM STEINBERG Head men's basketball coach Dennis Felton (right) and Katie Gilbert, an assistant for the women's basketball team, do yard work for an elderly Athens resident.

Media Credit: SARA GUEVARA Coach Richt reads to fifth graders as part of Mission Renewal Day.

Georgia football coach Mark Richt put down the pigskin and picked up a book Monday as he took part in Mission Renewal Day, an annual event in which all employees of the University's Athletic Association get out of the office and off the sidelines to do community service work throughout the Athens area.

Richt read a book to a group of fourth and fifth graders at Fourth Street Elementary.

"I think we learned some good lessons this morning," he said. "We live here and we're blessed by the people of the community in the way they support us. Anytime you can give back I think you should."

Other coaches, members of the athletic association and student-athletes visited nursing homes and did yard work around the community, including women's basketball coach Andy Landers.

"A lady's house burned a year ago and she hasn't been able to live there so the yard hasn't been kept up," Landers said. "So we went over and mowed and weed-eated and raked and cleaned up everything."

Like Richt, Landers also stressed the importance of giving back to an area that always has been extremely supportive of Georgia athletics.

"I think activities like this demonstrate the appreciation that we have for the Athens community and the people that support us," Landers said. "It's a way for us to go out and support them as well. It need not be a one way street."

Both coaches also emphasized the necessity of setting a positive example for their student-athletes and other members of the University community.

"For anybody who has been fortunate enough to have good things happen to them in life, I think it's important to give back," Richt said.

"More than anything, I want for (student-athletes) to have felt this feeling," Landers said. "The feeling that you get when you help someone who maybe can't help themselves for a couple of hours and get in the car and head back and really feel good. It needs to be something that everyone wants to do and does."

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