The Flames Club raises money for opponent campus’ recovery
The Liberty University Flames Club raised more than $14,000 toward the victims of Hurricane Sandy in their victory against Stony Brook Saturday, Nov. 10. Their project, dubbed #fillthebill, resulted in the Flames Club partnering with long-time associate Gleaning For The World (GFTW) to raise funds for their New York-based opponents and pledging $1 for every person who showed up to the football game.
Sportsmanship — Liberty Athletics helped raise money for relief efforts on the Stony Brook campus and for student athletes. Photo credit: Ruth Bibby
“We’re actually shipping supplies into the community of Stony Brook, and we’ll be using some of the funds to get supplies for the team that is actually playing,” Ronald T. Davison, president of GFTW, said. “So it’s an awesome Christian outreach that is far beyond just a football game.”
According to libertyflames.com, 14,419 fans attended. The match against Stony Brook also happened to be on the Liberty football team’s senior night. The Flames won 28-14 against the Seawolves, who were ranked sixth in the nation, and will be looking to prepare for the NCAA playoffs, which start Nov. 24.
“We tried to beat them on the field, but we wanted to show that we cared about them as individuals,” Todd Wetmore, the associate athletics director for athletics communication, said.
According to the Stony Brook president’s letter to the students of his university, their Manhattan campus has experienced power outages since the hurricane hit.
“We as a community experienced something similar to this during the summer,” Wetmore said. “We had a massive storm come through here that wiped out a lot the power in our area. I was without electricity for a week at my house.”
During the power outages, Liberty and Thomas Road Baptist Church ministered to the community by setting up housing, offering discounted meals to people and even offering free repairs for people affected by the storm, he said.
“Now we can be a ministry to another community, and we’re just hoping that it helps,” Wetmore said. “By no means are we going to rebuild everything that’s happened up there, but we can be a bit of a ministering hand to (Stony Brook).”