Volleyball and Men's Soccer Give Back

By Mary Claire Miller '15

WINCHESTER, Va. - The women's volleyball and men's soccer teams recently gave back to the community by participating in Shenandoah University's annual Partnership with Community Day.

The two teams spent the day helping to plant an aromatherapy garden for the residents at Our Health.

Our Health is located downtown and it is a non-profit organization that helps smaller organizations receive grants. They also have an adult care center on Cameron Street where they work with older people who may have Alzheimer's disease.

 "We planted an aromatherapy garden," said head volleyball coach Jaime Terenzi. "Our Health uses it for a lot of different reasons to try to trigger memories for the patients."

This is the first time the volleyball team has ever worked with Our Health to do any type of service project.

"In the past we've done volunteer stuff but we aren't directly involved with the people," said sophomore Haley Smith.

The two teams were there from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. helping to plant the garden. They had originally planned to leave at noon but they ended up staying much longer to continue working.

"Digging out the garden was something difficult for them because they tried to save the top grass and they moved that top grass to another part of grass in the parking lot that was all weeds," said Terenzi.

The director at Our Health invited the team to come back and help again at the organization.

 "I feel like we'll keep doing it after this year because most of our team did show up," said sophomore Katy Griffith.

Most of the girls had a very good experience working with the organization and plan to do it again very soon.

"Katy and I talked about even just going by ourselves to do it," said Smith. "That's how much of an impact it left on us."

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