ELBURN – Some heavy lifting is done by most sports teams during their offseasons. For the Kaneland baseball team, that lifting isn’t just done in the weight room.
Several times each year the players volunteer at the Elburn Food Pantry off-loading and shelving eight hundred to a thousand pounds of products from the Northern Illinois Food Bank on Thursdays. That almost always includes the November and December monthly food bank deliveries to the Pantry’s Elburn Community Center location – the largest deliveries of the year with additional holiday meal boxes that include a full-size frozen turkey. The team helps off-load other monthly deliveries on an as-needed basis.
The Knights players volunteer their time on Thursdays, when they have a late arrival day at school, though during their most recent volunteer day on Nov. 10, the delivery truck was late and they had to depart the Food Pantry before it arrived. Still, the Knights relish their time spent volunteering there.
“It’s a lot of fun and something we can do together as a team off the field to help our local community,” senior Preston Harris said. “The whole team usually turns out to help, from seniors to freshmen.”
Because the volunteering effort is a team experience, senior Luke Calabrese believes it could help the team chemistry on a squad that has plenty of talent expected to be in the mix for the 2017 season.
“We think we have the pitching, defense, and hitting we need to win conference and make a deep run in the playoffs this season,” Calabrese said.
The Elburn Food Pantry is open to Kaneland School District residents on Thursdays from 6 to 7 p.m. and serves more than 30 families and some 23 Elburn Meadows senior citizens. The pantry is supported by donations and staffed by nearly a hundred volunteers.
Pantry director Rita Burnham got involved through her church, Grace Lutheran in Lily Lake, about 15 years ago. The pantry relies on volunteers to make it work, especially late in the year when Thanksgiving and other holiday meals come in.
“We don’t do any fundraising,” Burnham said. “We operate the pantry strictly with donations from local residents, the Elburn Lions Club, the Girl Scouts and local churches.”
The pantry purchases canned goods and other shelf-stable items from the Northern Illinois Food Bank for about nine cents on the dollar.
Marty Bradley, a longtime pantry volunteer, goes to Jewel-Osco each week and purchases meat, produce, and bakery items to add to its distributions. Jewel-Osco also generously donates a large variety of items to the pantry on a weekly basis.
Volunteer Mel Pohlman usually leads the lifting and ferrying of the monthly pallet of product from the Community Center parking lot, through its north entrance, across the gym, and up and down hallway ramps in the old Elburn High School to room No. 7, a former classroom where the food pantry is located. It usually takes him 60 to 90 minutes.
Kaneland’s baseball team began assisting Pohlman with off-loading its largest deliveries about three years ago at the suggestion of Clare Laudont, whose son was then a member of the team.
“Coach Brian Aversa thought it was a great idea,” Laudont said, “and suggested to the team it as a community service project.”
Since then, the Knights have provided 15 to 20 able bodies to service the 7:30 a.m. deliveries and complete the work in about half the time it takes Pohlman to do it on his own.
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