The holidays are a time to give thanks and appreciate the blessings in one's life. The members of the USA South Athletic Conference Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) realized that not everyone is as fortunate as they are and wanted to do something to help make it a happier holiday in their communities, thus Cans Across the Conference was initiated in 2004.
SAAC organized the canned food drive as a community service competition amongst the 18 institutions in the USA South. Each campus SAAC collected cans and other non-perishable items at their school to benefit a local charity. It was up to each institution to decide how they wanted to collect and to which group the donation would go. The institution with the most items collected would be crowned the Cans Across the Conference Champion.
For this year, thanks to the hard work of NCWC's SAAC advisors, Chuck Shoemaker and Kohl Orner, and Bishop students, North Carolina Wesleyan collected a new school record of 4,075 items towards the Cans Across the Conference competition. Wesleyan selected to donate our collection to A Touch of the Father's Love Ministry & Food Pantry, an organization that operates out of the neighboring town of Battleboro, NC. The new record for NCWC beat out last year's amount of 1,881 which was the previous high for NCWC.
With a grand total of 17,650 items, Averett University (Va.) is the Cans Across the Conference Champion for 2018. The Cougars have now claimed their fourth consecutive competition victory. Averett's collection is the most in school history and the third-most garnered in a single year by an institution in the during the life of the competition. Berea College (Ky.) collected 10,465 items, which is the ninth-highest total in a single year by an institution in the history of the competition, to finish second while Methodist University's 8,192 items rounded out the top-three.
Overall, the USA South institutions collected 64,059 items this fall which is the second-highest total in competition history and an improvement of 11,603 from last year. Over the 15-year history of the program, USA South Conference institutions have donated 505,781 items to various organizations.
Individually, 13 institutions, consisting of Agnes Scott College (Ga.), Averett, Berea, Covenant College (Ga.), Greensboro College, Huntingdon College (Ala.), Mary Baldwin University (Va.), Meredith College (NC), Methodist (NC), N.C. Wesleyan College, Pfeiffer University (NC), Piedmont College (Ga.) and William Peace University (NC) improved on their collection amounts from a year ago. Additionally, of those schools, Agnes Scott, Averett, Berea, Covenant, Huntingdon, Mary Baldwin, Meredith, N.C. Wesleyan, Pfeiffer and William Peace set new single-year school records for items collected during this year's competition.