SEC Names 21 to 2019 Swimming & Diving Community Service Teams

Courtesy: Southeastern Conference

ATHENS, Ga. – The SEC sponsors Community Service Teams for all 21 league sponsored sports. The Community Service Team looks to highlight an athlete from each school who gives back to their community in superior service efforts.

The 2019 SEC Men’s Swimming & Diving Community Service Team is as follows:

Daniel Kober, Junior, Alabama
In addition to serving on Alabama Athletics’ Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and helping direct the Crimson Tide’s community service efforts, Kober has also been involved in UA’s Alberta Head Start Unity Project, a department-wide effort to make a difference in the lives of the students of the Alberta Head Start program. He has also worked with the Tide’s community outreach efforts through its Halloween Extravaganza and Project Angel Tree events. One of the Crimson Tide’s top distance swimmers, Kober has picked up wins in the 500 freestyle against Texas A&M, Ohio State and Florida State as well as the 1,000 freestyle against the Buckeyes during the regular season. He is also a two-time Honorable Mention CSCAA Scholar All-American and member of the SEC Academic Honor Roll.

Foster Ballard, Senior, Auburn
Ballard has been very involved in the Auburn University and the city of Auburn communities since arriving as a freshman. On campus, he joined the Auburn Leadership Institute CONNECT in 2016 and became the Director in 2017. An active member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, Ballard was a representative in 2016-17, attended the SEC Student-Athlete Leadership Conference in the summer of 2017 and has been a member of the SEC Disaster Relief Committee since 2017. A team captain since 2017, he has been a volunteer with the Lee County Habitat for Humanity, a Rocket Reader volunteer tutor at Dean Road Elementary, participated in the City of Auburn Downtown Trick or Treat, took part of Auburn’s Tigers Give Back Community Service Day and the Special Olympics Unified Flag Football Game. Ballard has also participated in the Auburn SAAC community service trips to the Birmingham Zoo and the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Birmingham. Expecting to graduate in Fall 2019, he was a 2016 USA Olympic Trials qualifier, was a part of Auburn’s SEC and NCAA teams in 2017 and 2018 and he is currently the seventh-fastest performer (1:42.91) with the 18th- and 21st-fastest performances in school history in the 200 fly.

Chandler Bray, Junior, Florida
Bray has compiled a total of 25.5 community service hours this season. He has volunteered at Littlewood Elementary School, Food4Kids, Human Foosball tournament, and the Trinity United Fall Harvest Festival. The Human Foosball Tournament is a tournament that helped raise funds and awareness for a rare chromosome disorder. The Food4Kids is a food drive in Gainesville, while volunteering he helped sort and pack items to be distributed to locally. While at Littlewood Elementary, Bray reads with the children and helps them with homework. He is a three-time All-American, three-time SEC Champion (200 MR x2, 400 MR), two-time All-SEC First Team, an SEC Academic Honor recipient, 2017 SEC First-year Academic Honor Roll Recipient, 2017 All-SEC Freshman Team, an SEC Freshman of the Week, was a member of the 200 MR which holds the fastest time in school history.

James Guest, Senior, Georgia
Guest has participated in UGA Special Olympics since 2016. He is one of several student-athlete volunteers who helped kids from Athens community participate in baseball games (2016-2018). He was also chosen as the swimming and diving representative for the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) in 2017-18. Guest is an incoming Leadership Fellow, which is a highly selective yearlong leadership program designed to enhance leadership capabilities. He was selected as one of 28 students to participate in the Corsair Society, which prepares students for careers in the financial services industry. Guest has been named to the Athletic Directors Honor Roll and Dean’s List (2015-18) and to the SEC Academic Honor Roll (2016-18). He was chosen for the CSCAA Academic All-American First Team in 2018, and received the Academic Achievement Award in 2017 at the UGA Honors Banquet. One of the team captains for the 2018-19 UGA swim season, Guest is a two-time All-American placing 8th in the 200 breaststroke and the 4×100 medley relay at the 2018 NCAA Championships. He represented Canada at the national level in the 2015 World University Games in Gwangju, South Korea.

Glen Brown, Junior, Kentucky
Brown has served a host of organizations in the Lexington community. As the Vice President of Kentucky’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, in December he helped select Special Olympics Kentucky as UK Athletics’ Charity of Choice through April 2020. Brown assisted in setting up the first event between SOK, a bowling event in Lexington that attracted over 60 UK student-athletes. Athletes from Kentucky and SOK were paired for a day at the bowling alley. He also has served with Habitat for Humanity, Real Read Program, Tri For Sight and the Lexington Breast Cancer Awareness Walk. When the Lexington Habitat for Humanity moved buildings, he coordinated an event where the team assisted Habitat for Humanity in setting up their new location for their grand opening. Additionally, Brown took charge of creating a Thanksgiving Day basket for a local family in need. Brown was one of 28 current/former student-athletes that participated in the SEC Career Tour last November in Atlanta. He holds a school record in the 200 IM with a 1:44.16 charted in the preliminary bout of the 2018 SEC Championships.

Grant Reed, Sophomore, Missouri
Reed has volunteered for a number of community service projects since he arrived in Columbia, most notably The Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri. In all, he has totaled 21 hours volunteering his time at The Food Bank, including time helping with the Buddy Pack Program, which gives nutritious food to children who rely on free or reduced-price lunches. Reed has also participated in the Swim Across America – St. Louis Open Water Swim the last two years, and spent time with Mizzou Moves and the Soap Box Derby.

Jackson Smith, Senior, South Carolina
In the 2018-2019 academic year, Smith has completed 23 hours at various locations in the Columbia area. He is an active member in the marketing committee Student Athlete Advisory Committee, is a student-athlete liaison on the USC Athletics Diversity Committee, and attended the SEC Career Tour in Fall 2018.

Sam Rice, Senior, Tennessee
Rice worked with the Chancellor’s Honors Program, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and the Voleaders program during his senior year in Knoxville. He also logged time in the past with Community Holiday Meal, the UT Medical Center Man Run, VolsHELP, Annual Adapted Sportsfest, and Read Across America Day. Starting in the fall, Rice took a position as the Social Media and Marketing Chair with the SAAC. He has tallied 321 total hours of community service in his four years at Tennessee, the most community service hours of any male on the team. Rice was selected for the 2018 SEC Academic Honor Roll. He also serves on the student advisory board with the Center for Health and Wellness on campus.

Connor Long, Senior, Texas A&M
As a team captain, one of Long’s primary responsibilities is organizing monthly community service projects for the Aggie swimming and diving team. Long and his teammates have consistently served Twin City Mission, which helps homelessness, violence and abuse, family conflict, youth in crisis, life skills deficiencies and poverty in the Brazos Valley. The Aggies serve as clean-up crews for the shelter’s local warehouses, among other duties. Long also participated in Aggies Read, which is a Texas A&M student-athlete led initiative to promote literacy in local schools. He served with The Big Event for two years before becoming the team liaison and organizer in 2018 and 2019. Throughout his collegiate career, Long has participated in Aggies CAN, which is the largest student-athlete-run canned food drive in the nation. He was the Aggies’ nominee for the 2019 SEC Swimming and Diving Scholar-Athlete of the Year with a 3.481 grade point average in industrial distribution. Long has been named to the Texas A&M Athletics Director’s Honor Roll for six consecutive semesters and has been named to the SEC Academic Honor Roll the past three years.

The 2019 SEC Women’s Swimming & Diving Community Service Team is as follows:

Nicole Raicik, Senior, Alabama
Raicik has put in a number of hours in the community, focusing her outreach effort to the Stallings RISE Center, the Crimson Tide’s nationally recognized early childhood education program that is dedicated to excellence in service, research, and teaching. She has also been involved in UA’s Alberta Head Start Unity Project, a department-wide effort to make a difference in the lives of Alberta Head Start students as well as UA’s Halloween Extravaganza and Project Angel Tree events. A three-year member of the SEC Academic Honor Roll, Raicik has earned both the Crimson Tide’s Coaches Award and Most Dedicated honors.

Marlena Pigliacampi, Senior, Arkansas
Pigliacampi has participated in community service projects both individually and with the team. She has volunteered at the Sunshine State Championshipsand regularly works with Meals on Wheels. Pigliacampi visits patients at the VA Hospital and volunteers with the local Speical Olympics chapter. She helped raise money for SAAC to take local kids Christmas shopping and helped pack meals for food pantries in Arkansas with Fearless Food Fight. Honor Roll selection. Pigliacampi holds the team’s top time in the 200 fly this season and the team’s top time in the 800 free relay this season.

Bailey Nero, Senior, Auburn
Nero has been very involved in the Auburn University and the city of Auburn communities since arriving as a freshman. Throughout her four years at Auburn, she has volunteered at the East Alabama Food Bank, Oak Park Retirement Home and the Lee County Humane Society. Nero also spent time in Chewacla State Park as part of the 2018 Tigers Give Back Community Service Day. A senior leader, she has also tutored at one of the local elementary schools. Working towards a BS in Biochemistry, Nero has been consistently on the Dean’s List, a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, a member of Pi Sigma Phi Honor Society, a Top Tiger, a representative on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and a member of the Pre-Pharmacy Club.

Hannah Burns, Senior, Florida
Burns has compiled a total of 25.75 community service hours this season. She has volunteered as a Gator Mentor, the Reading Club, at a human foosball tourney, 5th grade field trip visit, Atrium-chair volleyball, at Shands Children’s Hospital, Brain Breaks, the Trinity United Fall Harvest Festival, Gator Tracks, and Gator Tracks gift wrapping. She has spent time visiting sick children at UF Shands Hospital, including playing games and reading with them. Burns volunteered for the Human Foosball Tournament, a tournament that helped raise funds and awareness for a rare chromosome disorder. Burns has served as a Gators Mentor where she mentors the Gainesville youth. She has worked with The Reading Club, where she helped local Gainesville Children with homework. As a part of Gator Tracks, Burns helped gift wrap presents and then helped deliver them to children at local schools. She is a CSCAA Scholar All-America, two-time SEC Community Service Team member, a two-time SEC Academic Honor Roll recipient, and a SEC First-Year Academic Honor Roll recipient.

Jordan Stout, Junior, Georgia
Stout volunteered at Mercy Health Center as a social service volunteer. After patients were done with their respective doctors, she visited him or her and saw if there were any non-medical struggles that she could help them with. Stout is also involved with MEDLIFE (Medicine, Education, and Development for Low-Income Families Everywhere). MEDLIFE also partners with a wide variety of organizations in the Athens area like Food 2 Kids and Backpack Project, which Stout has also be a part of. More recently, her team joined an organization called Swim Across America, raising money for cancer research by swimming a 5k open water swim in September that will benefit the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorder Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. This past summer, Stout was chosen by her coaches to complete a leadership program. She recently became a new member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC). In 2017-18, Stout was named Second-Team ALL-SEC and earned distinction on the J. Reid Parker Director of Athletics Academic Honor Roll. She was named a Presidential Scholar for spring 2018 in addition to being named to the Dean’s List and the Director of Athletics Academic Honor Roll for both the fall and the spring. Stout also earned a spot on the 2017 and 2018 CSCAA Scholar All-American Team. Stout represented Georgia at NCAA’s in 2018. She was named to the First-Year SEC Academic Honor Roll as well as the Dean’s List and Director of Athletics Academic Honor Roll for both semesters.

Courtney Clark, Senior, Kentucky
Clark has posted 168 hours in community service projects in less than four years at Kentucky. In addition, she has also developed her own University club called UK GIVE, where she leads group of students in monthly service projects. As the founder of this program in 2017, Clark leads members through monthly service projects that benefit the community, including: creating holiday cards and donations for Greenhouse 17, serving dinner at Hope Lodge, coordinating and serving dinner at The Food Chain, multiple outdoor and park cleanups, campus tabling events to promote environmental sustainability, and coordinating Lexington Humane Society adoption volunteers. She has been serving community dinner at the Maxwell Church close to campus since she arrived at UK in 2014, quickly falling in love with the community that she would call home for four years. That experience led Clark to go on a service trip to Tanzania in 2017. There, she taught English, helped build a school for students, and built chicken coops for a women’s co-op. That following summer, in June 2018, Clark became a Marathon Kids volunteer at the Nike Headquarters. Her devotion to service was noticed in September 2018 by others when she was selected to attend the University Leadership Summit on behalf of UK Student Organizations to help solve the University’s issues regarding mental health and student involvement. In that process, Clark inputted valuable first-hand information, and also took strong tips back to UK Student Organizations, disclosing the benefits of student involvement in relation to mental health. Beyond her regular service, she has served at the Ronald McDonald House of the Bluegrass, volunteered at Old Friends Farm and has read to a class at a Lexington elementary school. In March 2018, Clark attended the National Fair Trade Conference in Washington, D.C. with three other University of Kentucky students who made up the fair trade board members at UK. The four students, Clark included, were selected to attend the conference on scholarship. Clark spent two days at Georgetown University, discussing and developing ways to advance the University of Kentucky into Kentucky’s largest Fair Trade university.

Alexandria Ham, Junior, LSU
Ham currently volunteers with a homeless ministry called Serve the City, where they spend time with those in need and feed them meals once a month. On the weekends as well as various times throughout the week, she volunteers for her church, Progression, and their childcare. Ham is currently a semester volunteer at the local YMCA, leading programs and helping to coach. She served as a camp counselor at a Louisiana-wide church camp for a week over the summer. Ham also participated in a Night to Shine, a prom night for people with disabilities hosted by the Tim Tebow Foundation, and the LSU Boozar, a community wide Halloween event. She volunteered at the Baton Rouge Special Olympics Championships, passing out medals and awards to participants and at the local Boys and Girls club, spending time with kids after school. For 15 hours, Ham led games and lessons at Vacation Bible School. She has accumulated 40 hours in the fall semester of 2018. Ham is on the college leadership team at her church where she spends time getting college kids engaged and getting to know them. A member of the Sports Administration Association at LSU, she is a three-time member of the SEC Academic Honor Roll (2016, 2017, 2018).

Devan Sweeney, Sophomore, Missouri
In her time at Missouri, Sweeney has made a difference volunteering in the community. Most notably, she spends numerous hours student teaching in the Columbia community. Additionally, Sweeney has helped the Mizzou swimming and diving teams raise thousands of dollars for the Swim Across America – St. Louis Open Swim the past two years and spent time volunteering at Mizzou Moves and the Veteran’s Affairs Service Event.

Allison Wade, Senior, South Carolina
Wade does ongoing community service at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina. This includes, but is not limited to, their youth group, liturgy preparation, children’s night, and bible study. She has completed 150 hours in the 2018-2019 school year.

Brianna Leverenz, Senior, Tennessee
Leverenz logged hours for Voloween, the UT Medical Center Man Run, Christmas Caroling and the Community Holiday Meal campaign just during the fall. The co-chair of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, she has recorded 13 hours of community service in StrongHER Together, Coats for the Cold, 818 Ministries and Unity Games. In all, Leverenz has registered over 200 hours of community service in her time at the University of Tennessee. She has varied experience as an Emerald Youth head coach (learn-to-swim coordinator), a principle investigator for the biomechanics department and a Tennessee Student-Athlete Representative at the SEC Leadership Council. Leverenz has also been awarded academic Honor Roll from the SEC in each of her past three years.

Tiffany Futscher, Senior, Texas A&M
Active in the community, Futscher has spent many nearly 80 hours serving various organizations during the 2018-19 school year alone. In addition to providing more than 60 hours of nursing support at the College Station Medical Center, she volunteered with Aggies CAN (annual student-led canned food drive), packed canned goods at the Brazos Valley Food Bank and packed clothes for single mothers at the Lincoln House of Hope. An active member of Texas A&M’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, Futscher has served as the organization’s Secretary (1016-17), Productions (2017-18) and Vice President of Student-Athlete Wellness (2018-19). As a part of her duties with SAAC, she created a mental fitness program for student-athletes to become aware of the impact mental health has on life and athletic performance. Futscher has been named to the Texas A&M Athletics Director Honor Roll and the SEC Academic Honor Roll.

Namilla Sanchez, Junior, Vanderbilt
Sanchez is a strong participant in Vanderbilt’s DIVE (Design as an Immersive Vanderbilt Experience) program, where she partnered with a Nashville-area food waste initiative and helped market the organization as well as create a three-part documentary to bring awareness to food insecurity. She has earned 40 total community service hours this year in many projects. Last summer, Sanchez travelled to Morocco through Vanderbilt’s Soles4Souls trip, where she was able to help distribute shoes to schools around Morocco in her second trip with the University. She is also an avid participant with Buena Vista Elementary, where she has helped with the SAAC holiday party and field days. Supporting her passion for helping with food insecurities, Sanchez also is a member of Scrape your Plate Day (SPEARS) and Nashville Rescue Mission serving meals. She was recently featured as Vanderbilt University’s student-athlete of the month for January. The junior has earned a spot on the SEC Academic Honor Roll for the past two years.