MELBOURNE, Fla. (Women’s Rowing) – The Florida Tech women’s rowing team took a break from its classes and training schedule on Saturday to volunteer at a local Community of Hope project, supported by Habitat for Humanity.

The Panthers arrived at 8 a.m. and quickly got to work on a transitional home. They primed and painted a three-bedroom duplex in Melbourne which will be occupied in the next few months by two homeless families.

“It was really cool to have a hand in helping build a home,” Tech head coach Adam Thorstad said. “We didn’t meet the families, but it was neat that we were able to help them. Our girls had a lot of fun and it was good to see them work together. At the end, they were asking me if we could work on more projects such as this one in the future.

“It’s important for our girls to learn the value of community service while they’re young. Hopefully when they begin their professional careers, they’ll volunteer in their community. Even though our schedules consist of classes and training right now, we set aside some time to help out. I will encourage the girls to do the same thing when they enter the real world.”

Among the 22 student-athletes that assisted with the job was senior Aline Seekins. The Searsport, Maine native said Saturday’s opportunity benefited not only two families, but also the team.

“Having the opportunity to volunteer as a team was a good bonding experience for us,” she said. “It’s nice to spend time with each other outside of rowing and give back to the community. To help with the construction of a home that will be occupied by two families makes us feel good.

“By volunteering, we know that we are doing something good for other people and it also helps us as a team. For this project, we had to work as a team to get the job done. We’ll be able to look back on this and realize what we did. It’s amazing to see what we can do together.”

Community of Hope is a not-for-profit organization that places families in transitional housing in order to promote long term stability. Its mission is to transform lives with hope and dignity by providing opportunities through single & multi-family transitional housing that allows families with children to remain together, become self-reliant and move to a permanent home.

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization. Through volunteer labor and donations of money and materials, Habitat builds and rehabilitates simple, decent houses alongside its partner families. Since the organization was developed in 1976, volunteers have built over 350,000 houses around the world, providing more than 1.75 million people in 3,000 communities with safe, decent, affordable shelter.

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