Jan. 18, 2011

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Bronx, N.Y. - While getting back to work on the track over the past two weeks, the Fordham track & field teams have also put in plenty of work off the track during the holiday season, putting together two community service projects.

The first project was a holiday toy drive, where the teams collected and donated toys to the Butler Child Advocacy Center at Montefiore Hospital.

The team collected 77 board games to give to the Center's annual Holiday Party. The Center works with 200 children from the Bronx community that come from abusive households. The party was attended by the children and their families. The games collected by the Fordham track & field team allowed every child who attended to leave the party with a gift.

The Rams are also participating in the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe Program, collecting various pairs of shoes and sneakers for a new age recycling effort.

"Coach Dewey is always encouraging us to do community projects, and I stumbled onto this one in the Fall," said junior runner Elisabeth Warren. "It was a simple program, and track runners accumulate a lot of shoes, so it seemed like a natural fit and it's a great cause."

The goal of the program is to make recycling athletic shoes second nature with Nike Reuse-A-Shoe bins available at more than 300 locations in the United States, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

The program uses the three basic parts of any shoe (the outsole, midsole, and fabric upper) in a recycling method called Nike Grind. Nike Grind is broken down into:

• Nike Grind Rubber, made from the shoe's outsole, is used in track surfaces, interlocking gym flooring tiles, playground surfacing and even new products. It's also used in trim items like buttons and zipper pulls.

• Nike Grind Foam, made from the shoe's midsole, is used as a cushion for outdoor basketball and tennis courts, as well as futsal fields.

• Nike Grind Fiber, made from the shoe's fabric upper, is used in the creation of cushioning pads for facilities like indoor synthetic courts and wood courts.

Heading into donation week (following Martin Luther King Jr. Day), the Rams have collected close to 150 pairs of shoes or sneakers to put into the program. For more information about the program, visit the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe Website.