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To advertise the great work done by each campus SAAC throughout the academic year, the Conference profiles the recent accomplishments of a different member institution's SAAC every month. Topics may include Community Service projects, ideas of how to promote SAAC on Pac-10 campuses, proceedings of SAAC meetings, happenings at orientation or kick-off events, activities that SAAC sponsors on a campus, or seminars that are incorporated into a Life Skills program. Articles and pictures are submitted on the first of each month by a representative of the profiled institutional SAAC. University of Arizona
December 2008One of the main areas of focus for the Student Athlete Advisory Committee at the University of Arizona has been promoting social responsibility. Student-athletes are regarded as role models, and we are fortunate to have the representation of young adults from 19 different teams. Members of our teams are active in public speaking through non-profit organizations, schools, and business organizations/clubs and speak about topics such as saying no to drugs, the importance of academics, achieving goals, and handling peer pressure. We believe service is important for enhancing our surrounding community, and we enjoy the opportunity to repay the continued support of our fans.
As a project this year, we are organizing a shoe and clothing drive within the athletic department. This will be held as a competition between the staff and student athletes as a way to encourage donations by relying on the competitive spirit of our department.
Also, as method to bring all athletic participants together on this subject, we have presentations by guest speakers that are required for all athletes to attend. This semester's speaker was Linda Hancock, who gave a presentation titled Cambell's Soup, Frosted Flakes, and Sex, which was aimed at overall health and wellness education.
In alliance with the commitment to promote social responsibility, we encourage student athlete participation in the STEP UP! program. STEP UP! is an interdisciplinary bystander intervention program that addresses topics such as alcohol use, hazing, sexual assault, discrimination, depression, disordered eating, and many other topics. It was developed at the University of Arizona, has been adopted by the NCAA (Fall 2008 distribution), and is endorsed by the Pac-10 Conference.
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Oregon State University
November 2008The Oregon State University SAAC sponsored its Third Annual Fall Carnival on Sunday, October 26th, in the Truax Indoor Football Center. This event was free and open to all children in the Corvallis community area up through age 12. Once again it was a huge success with nearly 400 children and families participating.
Each OSU team has an activity booth at which the children can participate and receive candy. Some of the activities this year included a large obstacle course set up by the softball team, face painting by cross country and track, tractor races with women's and men's basketball, cake walk with women's soccer, ring toss with men's soccer, eating donuts from a string with women's crew, sack races with men's crew, fishing for candy with swimming, and batting with baseball. Many children AND their parents participated in the photo op with members of the football team. This is one of several community service opportunities in which ALL OSU athletic teams participate. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Arizona State University
October 2008
Submitted by: Ryan Skorupka, Football
Over the last few years, the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) at Arizona State University has taken on the task of trying to increase the attendance and support for each of the varsity sporting events. Not only has it been our goal to increase the attendance of current and former ASU students and community members, we have also focused on engaging and encouraging current student athletes to support their fellow Sun Devils. Some of the ideas we have come up with include Game Day T-shirts, "Gold Games", and Brother-Sister Teams.
Over the course of the last year, we have begun to work closely with the marketing department here at ASU; additionally, we developed a committee of SAAC members to work on advertising upcoming games and events. One of the exciting new ideas we are implementing this year is Game Day T-shirts. The shirts will be given to each student athlete to be worn on their game days. The shirts will say something like: TODAY is Game Day... Ask me about it! Our hope is that students will begin to notice the shirts and become excited about the games, matches, and meets. We're considering the Game Day T-shirts "walking advertisements".
Although we are very excited about the addition of the Game Day T-shirts, we are still enjoying the growing tradition of Gold Games. Here at ASU, each varsity coach selects one home game/match/meet that they consider to be a "big game"; this is often a game against a rival institution, a Pac-10 team, or a nationally ranked opponent. By selecting the Gold Games, the coaches are sending a message to the athletes and asking for their support. We design t-shirts each year, list all of the Gold Games on the back, and then wear the shirts to each of the big games. This gives every athlete in the Sun Devil family a chance to show their support for the other athletic teams on campus. Finally, the addition of Brother-Sister Teams was a task we took on a few years ago. We thought it would be fun to team-up male and female teams and develop brother-sister relationships. The main purpose of this program is to encourage athletes to get to know each other, develop relationships, and have fun while supporting one another. SAAC members organize fun ways to show support for their brother or sister team. Some of the cool things teams have done include: making posters, decorating locker rooms, putting together goodie-bags, making t-shirts for games, making/buying snacks and Gatorade, and buying flowers. We encourage each team to be creative and come up with a unique way to show support for their brother or sister, while having some fun at the same time. As you can tell, we are very excited about the addition of new programs and the continued development of long standing traditions. Over the course of the year, we will be looking for new ways to engage students, fans, and other athletes. The SAAC team at ASU looks forward to another fun year filled with exciting competitions, entertaining events outside of our sports, and as always, success both on and off the playing fields.
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Washington State University June 2008 Submitted by: Danielle Berish, Washington State University SAAC President, Women's Swimming At Washington State University, our Student Athlete Advisory Committee has been busy working on three main objectives: increase student-athlete involvement in SAAC, increase the "athlete's presence" on campus, and foster growth and camaraderie among our athletes. To achieve our first goal, we very successfully re-organized the structure of our SAAC this year. By engaging already-involved team leaders, SAAC has been able to reach out to each of our student-athletes in one way or another. Our redesigned subcommittees - Community Outreach, Education/Hot Topics, Activities, and Campus Connections - provide more leadership position opportunities within SAAC. Each committee established unique goals, including various community service projects, article submissions to our campus newspaper, guest speakers to educate SAAC, and events to bring athletes together. An additional success of SAAC this year was a revamping of the Washington State SAAC website. It is now much more user friendly and is a go-to resource for any member. Increasing student-athlete involvement on campus is still a work in progress. This year we started a partnership with ASWSU, our student government, to build the bridge between student-athlete life and campus life. Our SAAC President now serves on the ASWSU Student Advisory Board to the President. Next year, we hope to become even more involved with ASWSU and other Registered Student Groups on campus. Finally, our goal of bringing student-athletes together was capped off with our Student Athlete Talent Show, "That Coug's Got Talent." The football team participated, complete with a Richard Simmons imitation; the soccer team performed a skit that portrayed healthy competition against UW; and various acts followed. Every sport's team was in attendance, proof that we had a lot of success with the event. Go Cougs!
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