Coach Pribbs and the Habitat Report

Apart from the pictures, Coach Pribbeno sent me the following report from the field...

On May 4th, the high school football team did their Spring community service project. This season we wanted to make a difference locally. We got into contact with Habitat for Humanity to see what we could do around here. They were building a house in Cicero which is 15 minutes Northeast of Westfield. We decided that was the project for us. The only problem was that it fell on a day where many players had other things going on. Some had SATs and some had another sports event. We had about 15 people able to make between players, coaches and family.

Before we started, we made sure to let them know that our work was not guaranteed and there was definitely no warranty! They still wanted us to work, so we got started. The flooring had already been started but we needed to finish it first. We had to glue down plywood, and then have the players come through to nail it down. When they first asked who wanted to use the nail gun, thankfully another lady’s hand went up first. The rest of the players had to do it the old fashion way. Some struggled more than others and needed (on estimate) 14 nails and 100 hits before they finally got 1 nail in the right spot and straight in. Others got the hang of it quickly.

We kept looking around and from time to time some of the guys were missing. Turns out they were sneaking off to eat some donuts!

Brock and Russell had the difficult task of going underneath the flooring and making sure there weren’t any nails sticking out and pick up anything that fell down there. They were picked for this job because of their tall stature and being nimble.

Coach Sturgis showed up and he had a look in his eye of determination. He was ready to build this house and nothing was going to stop him. Oh wait... lunch came and that stopped everyone for a little bit. The church down the road was nice enough to provide some ham or turkey sandwiches, a bag of chips, and some cookies.

Now, back to the building. One of the carpenters (you know someone who actually knew what he was doing) works in one of the prisons teaching the men there carpentry skills. He and the prisoners would build all of the panels for each house. The guys get some great training and Habitat gets some panels which help make this process so much easier. So they had all of the panels built and numbered. Now was the fun part of just carrying these panels up to the house and putting them in the correct spot. No problem with all the great football players… or so we thought. It was funny that every time we needed some muscle some of the guys were missing!

Then, surprise surprise, AD somehow found the nail gun. I sat back and thought our biggest and strongest guy is now doing a job that does not need much muscle while we are asking Mr. Krieg and Mr. Turley to carry some of these big panels!

Either way, we had Ryan “nimble like a cat” Pape, Gavin “Doin’ Work” Cross, Mitch “Handyman” Turley, Nick “1,000 hammer hits” Kreig, and other volunteers bringing the panels up and putting them where they needed to go. Then, AD would hammer it in with the gun. Whenever he was going to use the gun, everyone made sure to clear the area just to be sure we were safe and kept all of our digits.

Overall, it was a great experience and the players really got a feeling of accomplishment. We picked the perfect day where there was a lot of heavy lifting and no painting. After the last experience with these guys and a paint brush, I made sure that was something we were not doing! Thanks to everyone who took time to come and help. Delores (the lady we were building the house for) was very appreciative. I also think the other volunteers were very happy we were there to lift the heavy panels and do all the fun work no one else wanted to do.

Thanks again to everyone! I had a blast, and it looked like everyone had fun and felt like we Made a Difference!