Pats give back

Pats give back

Marion football helps out around its town

Sports Editor If you’ve been driving around Marion during the past two weeks, then odds are you’ve seen the Marion Patriots putting in work.

But perhaps not in the places that you’d automatically assume.

The football team has been involved with a series of community service events in the spring ranging from picking up trash near Highways 77 and 64, cleaning up their own campus prior to graduation, and even washing police cruisers and ambulances as a means of giving back.

“I really feel like coaches can have a big impact on kids, but if our only impact is on blocking and tackling, then we’re really doing a disservice to them,” said thirdyear Marion head coach Jed Davis. “So we want to find a way to teach them to be better men. How can they serve their community? Because the realty is that the community does a lot for them, too.”

Since Davis’s arrival in Marion in March of 2014, his teams have worked at soup kitchens around the holidays, visited retirement homes to play bingo with the residents and the beautification efforts, as well.

The players are often easily identified because they wear their red home jerseys during the community service.

“Each coach has his platoon of players and they have to do their share of community service,” Davis explains. “We just want people in town to be proud of our football program other than the 10 or 15 weeks in the fall. What else are we doing to make our program great? Not only are we winning playoff games, but now we’re teaching them to be involved in the community service. We want to teach them to be leaders. It’s giving back. We don’t mind giving up our time to serve other people.”

The response from the community has been extremely positive, Davis says.

“It’s been great. To see the look on people’s faces when you’re playing bingo with them at the nursing home.

That’s priceless,” says the coach. “The gratitude of the people at the homeless shelters in Memphis. These are people that only have what they can take with them.

That’s what stands out.”

The series of visits to the homeless shelter may be the most striking example of Davis’s players learning what it was like to give back.

“You know, when we were leaving there, I had kids telling me, ‘Coach, those guys are happier about the bowl of soup that we gave them than I am when I go out to eat at Chili’s,’” recalls Davis. “You need to appreciate what you’ve got. I think some kids just assume that when mom and dad take you out to eat that it’s the same for everyone. But that’s just simply not the case at all.

There are people out there that are sleeping on mats in these buildings and it makes them thankful. That’s really what we want our kids to take away from all of this.”

By Chuck Livingston