Kansas State University - The Royal Purple Yearbook

“Greeks compete in friendly challenge in order to help local children Fight for the Cause by Mary Bershenyi Kappa Kappa Gamma and Delta Chi brought five six-foot tall balls, eight sororities and 13 fraternities together for their annual philanthropy. Finding a good weekend for the philanthropy proved to be a challange. Intended to occur during the spring, Earthball had to be pushed back to the fall after being rained out two weekends in a row in April. " The weather made it really hard to put together last spring so we finally decided that instead of trying to schedule it around finals and the end of the year we would just move it to the fall seiTiester, " said Erin Leonard, senior in communication sciences and disorders and Kappa president. Among the multi-colored balls, soccer nets, and hundreds of Greek men and women, members of Kappa and Delta Chi acted as coaches and team leaders for each participating fraternity and sorority. " Most of our members act as coaches but they are also out here organizing registration, timing the games and working first aid, " said Sheldon Bucl, senior in management information systems and Delta Chi philanthropy chairman. " It is a really fun philanthropy to be involved with. " The Kappa/Delta Chi tradition had been long standing since 1997, Bucl said, and raised money for the children in Manhattan Head Start, one of the official philanthropies of Kappa. The orga- nization was a government-funded preschool helping families and giving young children skills to be successful as they progressed in school, including reading skills, basic math and writing. " Some girls go out and do recess duty during the year, " Kourt- ney Bettinger, junior in biology and Spanish, said. " We meet the kids and they get to know who we are helping by raising all of this money. " Together, Delta Chi and Kappa worked to secure sponsorships from local businesses, sold t-shirts to members and encouraged as man\ ' teams as possible to sign up from each fraternity and soror- ity. Each of the 21 teams, made of 12 people, worked together to push the six-foot, parachute fabric balls from one sideline of Memorial Stadium to the other, battling 12 players from the opposing team. " We are always looking to support a good cause, " Allyson Knight, senior in marketing, said. " Earthball is a good cause, but it is also really fun. We are going to go all the way this year — we have to win. W e ' re pumped. " earthball 73 ”