The three day fundraiser for St. Olaf sports programs, held on April 2-4, greatly exceeded expectations, gathering 835 financial donations totaling more than $154,000. Starting with a goal of 500 donations for 500+ student-athletes, this online giving campaign asked for gifts from alumni, students, parents and faculty to benefit St. Olaf’s student-athletes and their teams.
Student-athletes and coaches have posted creative videos explaining their teams’ successes and experiences in asking for donors to support their programs.
Whether it was videos of the Tennis team in Florida, the Football team on their newly renovated Klien Field or the Hockey team in its brand new ice arena, these athletes had fun creating videos showing their Ole pride.
Seen all over St. Olaf social media, the videos turned out to be a great success in soliciting donations for their respective sports.
These generous donations towards St. Olaf College’s varsity athletic teams will be put to use in renovating facilities, updating equipment and locker rooms, buying new uniforms and allowing teams to travel around the country in and out of season to compete.
Volleyball player Abigail Wiedel ’20 spoke to the team’s plans this upcoming fall.
“We are looking to travel to California next fall to start the season and would love your support,” Wiedel said. “Any donations would really help support St. Olaf Volleyball.”
St. Olaf Football led the fundraiser with 149 donations, totaling $39,701. Keaton Aronson ’20 and Max Karpinske ’20 expressed how donations would be used to help the team.
“There is still a lot of room for growth for St. Olaf’s football program,” Aronson said.
“Your donations have led to improvements allowing excellent student-athletes to attend a great school and have helped bring St. Olaf football back to a level of excellence that has been achieved in the past,” Karpinske said.
The men and women’s soccer teams have benefited from a number of donations as well, as last year’s fundraiser helped fund the plan to bring artificial turf on the Rolf Mellby Field.
Thanks to the gracious alumni and families, St. Olaf now has a high-performance athletic surface that club teams and intramural sports can use as well.
The softball and baseball teams combined for $12,431. These donations will go to new equipment such as balls, bats, helmets etc. On top of new equipment, this money will help finance the team as they travel to warmer weather, where they safely started their spring seasons while waiting for the snow to melt on the Hill.
