This fall, the Colonial High School football players will charge onto the field hungry for victory. To help them bulk up in time for the season, CFE Federal Credit Union donated a refrigerator to the team, fully stocked with nutrient-rich foods and beverages.
“We’ve always known that working out was really critical for our student-athletes, but teams have more recently begun to tie better nutrition to improved performance,” said Andrew Hamre, Colonial High School’s Athletic Director. “It is important to fuel your body before and after practice. With the right fuel in their systems, the players will get bigger, faster, and stronger. CFE’s donation will make a huge difference for the athletes and will help their confidence grow.”
With a lack of proper nutrition, some of the players struggled to gain weight after workouts. To combat this, Head Coach Donny Hodges began purchasing and preparing meals at home to feed them, from homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to tacos. However, having enough space to store this food had become a challenge, and CFE decided to contribute by sponsoring an industrial-sized refrigerator/freezer to the team, filled with produce, frozen chicken, yogurt, and other foods to fuel the team.
“When CFE learned about the players’ needs, we wanted to find a meaningful way to give back. By sponsoring this refrigerator, we can help these students get the nutritious meals they need after a long day of practice,” said Megan Jackson, CFE’s Regional Director of High School Branches.
CFE is no stranger to Colonial High School. In 2016, the credit union opened a student-run branch on the high school’s campus. Through this initiative, students are fully trained to operate a self-sufficient credit union branch at their high school, learning real-world skills about money management and financial services. The program is currently offered at six Central Florida high schools, with plans to expand in the fall of 2018.
In the future, departments at CFE will work to collect donations to help stock the refrigerator year-round.
“CFE’s donation gives us the ability to truly feed our players on a daily basis, and it shows them that someone in the community truly cares about them and is willing to invest in them. It shows them that a pillar of the community believes in them,” said Head Coach Donny Hodges.
