North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Pack Players Go Holiday Shopping
12/11/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
BY TIM PEELER
CARY, N.C. The Morgan brothers were looking for Transformers and wrestling action figures. Offensive lineman Jeraill McCuller was looking for Ninja Turtles, Willie Young for toy fishing boats and Donald Bowens for anything with Spider Man on it.
And offensive lineman Luke Lathan cleaned out the entire Star Wars section.
“If you go over there right now, there isn’t anything left,” said Lathan. “I got it all.”
The half dozen NC State football players and assistant coach Jason Swepson weren’t buying Christmas presents for themselves or their families. They traveled to the Wal-Mart in Cary to pick out presents to give to the Raleigh-area Toys For Tots, the annual campaign sponsored by the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve to supply holiday presents for families in need.
They picked out more than 3,000 toys and spent more than $11,500 in during the two-hour shopping spree, just a small portion of the money raised by NC State and Coca-Cola during a season-long fundraiser for Toys for Tots.
Coke donated $500 for every touchdown the Wolfpack scored this year, for a total cash donation of $14,500. Fans brought another 1,400 new, unwrapped presents during a single-day toy drive at the NC State-North Carolina football game at Carter-Finley Stadium on Nov. 10. Other cash gifts and in-kind donations totaled more than $15,000, pushing the total amount raised to nearly $50,000.
That donation will be a big part of the 75,000 toys given away by the Toys for Tots program in the nine-county Triangle region. That’s a significant increase from the 67,000 toys given last year, according to First Staff Sergeant David K. Crafton, the area coordinator for the US Marine Corps Reserves.
First-year Wolfpack head coach Tom O'Brien, a former Marine officer, is a member of the Toys for Tots national board of directors and wanted to help bring awareness to the program when he arrived this time last year. Coca-Cola and Wolfpack Sports Marketing put together the campaign to raise those funds.
“We had great support from Coca-Cola, and our generous fans to make this possible,” said Wolfpack Sports Marketing general manager Brian Asbill. “And the players who helped score the touchdowns and pick out the toys did a great job as well.”
For the players, it was a fun respite from the rigors of exam week. They filled up nearly 50 shopping carts for infants, toddlers, elementary-age and teen-agers. The total number of toys was too much for the Wal-Mart computer system, which limits the amount of purchases per register some where around $5,500. So they had to move around the crowded store to get all the toys checked out.
And it took a couple of swipes and multiple calls to the banks to make sure the extra-large purchase went through on the corporate credit cards that were used to buy all the gifts. But there no Scrooges in the check-out lines, as smiles ruled the day.
“There are thousands of kids out there that aren’t in homes that are financially stable,” said Young, a defensive end for the Wolfpack. “They don’t have those Christmas wishes that come together the way they might want them to. For an organization to come together and put the money together to come in here and buy all these toys for all these kids it’s a privilege for me to be a part of.”
For DaJuan and De’Andre Morgan, it was a chance to give back to one of the organizations that helped them have presents to open while growing up in
“Our mom was a single parent for most of our childhood and we weren’t able to have a lot of things until my stepdad became part of our family,” DaJuan Morgan said. “My mom made the most of what she could, and we always had something to open at Christmas and we enjoyed it.
“So just knowing that a child is going to wake up and open up one of these toys that I picked out, that a little child will be happy and have a smile on his or her face for Christmas, that means a lot to me. To have the chance to do something like this brightens up my whole life.”
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
