Andover Football volunteering at the Step Up for Colleen 5K.

One of my former volleyball assistants was a classmate of Colleen Ritzer, so the volleyball team has participated in every one of them.

When it was moved to the fall — I decided to get the football team involved

While the original cause was to recognize Colleen and her efforts to be a great educator. The cause has become “Finding a way to be kind to everyone” — A football team has numerous cultural differences, numerous different types of people so I felt this would be the perfect walk.

We had over 70 athletes from all four grades and all three levels — Freshman, JV and Varsity.

The volunteer group — about 35 football players all arrived at 7:00 am and worked until 11:30 am –4 1/2 hours. The other 35 were just walkers and they arrived at 8:30 and walked until 11:00. 2 1/2 hours

This group of football players is socially aware and participate whenever they can. Having the walk in the fall allowed us to walk as a team. The spring would be hard to get every player to participate.