MORAGA, Calif. — For the first time in two years, the Saint Mary's athletic department, along with a number of student-athletes, teamed up with Grateful Gatherings, a local non-profit, in a project to help better the lives of children in a local foster home.
 
The Gaels went to Lafayette to furnish, remodel, landscape, and upgrade a foster home on May 7. The project began early in the morning and continued throughout the afternoon.
 
"Grateful Gatherings is a great partner for Saint Mary's," Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Mike Matoso said during the project. "They do a lot of great things for the community and it falls right in line with the mission of Saint Mary's. It provides us with a great opportunity to come together, our staff and our student-athletes, to work together and do something for our local community."
 
"This project allows us to see each other in a little bit of a different light," Matoso continued. "We see each other in the athletic department, but being able to do a community service project together and be able to work together for the greater good of the community and for Grateful Gatherings, it's special."
 
A number of student-athletes and staff split up and spent the morning and afternoon working inside and outside the house. Outside, the Gaels helped assemble patio furniture, remove weeds from the garden, and build a pergola. Indoors, another group of Gaels remodeled the rooms, mounted smart-TVs, hung pictures, and upgraded various elements of the bedrooms.
 
"One of our core values is community, and we've done a few other projects, like one in San Francisco, but we thought this would be a new experience with a little manual labor to show that a little hard work never hurt anybody," said Kyllie Glock with a laugh.
 
"I think that it's really good for us to come together and have this type of team-bonding experience. We have a lot of other activities that help there, like team dinners, but this also shows that the girls beside you won't only work for you on the field, but they will work next to you off the field as well. That brings a new type of experience that you can't get anywhere else."
 
This marks the second time the department as had worked with Grateful Gatherings, with their other project taking place in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
About Grateful Gatherings
Grateful Gatherings is a 501c3 beginning in 2013, and has turned into a vibrant, close-knit, and dedicated community of volunteers, donors, and corporate partners who help furnish homes of families transitioning out of homelessness or crisis, including single mothers, foster children, and military veterans.  https://gratefulgatherings.org/