Gopher Football
Golden Gopher football players Brandon Kirksey and D.L. Wilhite also took a trip for Spring Break. They also came back with great stories. In fact, both said that this Spring Break was their best ever. So, where did they go? Cozumel? South Padre? Miami? Palm Springs? Nope.
These two young men signed up for a Pay It Forward Tour through a local organization called Students Today Leaders Forever. Pay It Forward Tours are nine days-long, with service projects in six cities. Buses leave from one campus and travel to 5 different cities-a different city and service project each day.
Kirksey and Wilhite actually paid to travel around the country on a bus, sleep in community centers and church basements and perform community service projects. And they loved it.
“A lot of people we ran into couldn’t fancy how we were spending our spring break helping them, helping re-build their communities when we could have been somewhere on a beach, laying around and doing the things that you do over Spring Break,” Kirksey said. “We made a small, but large impact at every community site. Everybody was very thankful and they needed the help.”
“A lot of students are paying a whole bunch of money to go and just do nothing,” Wilhite said of other Spring Break destinations. “But this gave us the opportunity to see a whole bunch of different places and make an impact at the same time. So we came to the conclusion that would be a better use of our Spring Break time.”
Wilhite and Kirksey boarded a bus in Minneapolis and started heading east with no idea where they were going or what they would be doing.
The bus made its way to Rockford, Ill. where the group made tie blankets for terminally ill children. The next stop was a rehabilitation center for people with physical and mental disabilities in Fort Wayne, Ind. Then, it was on to Erie, Pa. where they cleaned up a YMCA. Following the stop in Erie, the bus ended up in Niagara Falls before heading on to Syracuse, N.Y., where they volunteered at Habitat for Humanity. The group cleaned up an area of forest in New Jersey, before arriving in Washington, D.C., their destination city.
Washington served as a rendezvous for seven busloads of Students Today Leaders Forever groups. There, all seven groups took part in a clean-up project on one of the dirtiest rivers in the nation, working at the Beavercreek Dam watershed on the Anacostia River. Among the numerous items the group pulled from the waterway, Kirksey said his group totaled 43 car tires and nearly 150 bags of trash.
“As I was down there, I was like ‘Dang, this is crazy,'” Kirksey said. “How could somebody throw this down here?”
In addition to the opportunity to make a positive impact on the communities they visited, Wilhite and Kirksey had an opportunity to meet and form relationships with other students. If it weren’t for the Pay It Forward Tour, the Gopher duo may never have met any of the other students they spent their breaks with. But it was a great by-product of the trip, they said.
“It helped me grow as a person,” Kirksey said. “We went on a tour with 41 other people that we didn’t even know. You’re on a bus with people you don’t know, people from all different races, all different backgrounds. You’re staying overnight at community centers and churches. It takes an open-minded person to go into an experience like that.”
“Most people would probably look at those 43 people and think they would never hang out together,” Wilhite said. “For us to go around the country and make such a big impact on so many different communities, it really felt good. I feel like in the aftermath of the trip, I became a better leader through the bonds that I made with all these people.”
In fact, some of the friendships were so strong Kirsksey said that as soon as the bus arrived back in Minneapolis there were discussions of a reunion.
“Now, we’re all great friends,” Kirksey said. “We miss each other already. We really built relationships with those people. I feel like I came back with 41 new friends, non-football related, friends who I can talk to and we share this common bond and this story about how we made other people feel great.”
Wilhite said he would “highly recommend” this type of Spring Break to other students. But Kirksey took it a step further. He thinks it should be a requirement.
“I wouldn’t even make it a choice,” Kirksey said. “Honestly, this is coming from the pits of my heart, this is the best Spring Break I’ve ever, ever had. I would encourage everybody to go do it.”
-By Andy Seeley, Associate Director of Athletic Communications