They couldn’t have been more smudged with dirt, sweat-soaked or mindful of proper hydration if they’d been on the outside practice field Tuesday at the Ochsner Sports Performance Center in Metairie.
But for the second straight year, one of the New Orleans Saints’ off-campus team building and bonding activities occurred doing interior facility improvement and outdoor beautification at the Trinity Community Center in the Hollygrove community of New Orleans. The workload for Saints players, coaches and staff included pushing supply-loaded wheelbarrows, lugging bags of mulch, smoothing soil and painting an interior portion of Trinity, which is managed by The 18th Ward, a nonprofit founded in 2019.
The improvements and additions from last year easily were identifiable, including areas to play street hockey, soccer and basketball outside.
“It means a lot to have them back in our neighborhood, in Hollygrove,” said Lowrey Crews, founder and CEO of The 18th Ward. “Every day after school, kids from Hollygrove come here and get snacks, homework help. There’s this big, beautiful, safe space to play and they get a meal to go home with.
“The Saints have turned this building from a neglected facility since (Hurricane) Katrina to a thriving community center. We have nonprofit office space upstairs – the Saints painted those rooms last year. We have activity space for young people on the bottom floor. And this has been a collective effort; from other nonprofits chipping in like HandsOn New Orleans, Rebuilding Together New Orleans and then a lot of our corporate sponsors like Ochsner.”
Players who participated last year were impressed with the transformation, and proud to be a part of it.
“It was a vision last year, (and) we’re just happy to be a part of that,” right guard Cesar Ruiz said. “Coming back and seeing it a year later is special, because it looks completely different. There’s work that we did and then on top of the work we did, there’s a lot more that went into it. Overall, it looks great.