While it may not be the season for Friday Night Lights, the football team got to work last week to tackle hunger around the surrounding community.

The team collected non-perishable items during lunch periods this past week for their first ever food drive, and will then be distributing the food to pantries in Chicago, Waukegan, and Lake Zurich today.

“We haven’t done a community service project like this in the recent years. We have helped out and volunteered at other things like a cancer walk, but this is the first time where it’s really all the players coming together,” Kyle McGee, junior football player, said. “We’re getting as many boxes as we can at school and door to door around the community, and then we’re donating an even split to every pantry.”

Though the team has done smaller service projects before, this has been their biggest event in recent memory. While it has taken work to set up and organize, McGee says the project is definitely worth it.

“In my experience at helping out at food drives, everyone always seems so happy to get food, so giving this back to them sets a precedent for you and makes you happy for them and for working for a good cause,” McGee said.

McGee’s history of volunteering at food pantries will come in handy when he and other teammates deliver the boxes of food to the nearby drives with the help of a local priest. While he looks forward to giving back to the community, McGee’s favorite part of the drive so far has been the build up and organization.

“My favorite part has been texting people asking them to bring food. We had Derrick Juarez text his whole contact list to bring food in a mass text,” Mcgee said. “It’s really fun to see people come through and actually bring bags of food to school.” 

Over the course of the last week, people have come through for McGee and the rest of the team. They managed to collectively gather fifty six cardboard boxes, or one thousand six hundred and eighty eight items, from kids at school and door to door around the community, which surpasses their goal by over twenty boxes.