Notre Dame High Football Team Funds Trip Through Recycling

The Notre Dame High football team, scheduled to make a trip to Ireland for the Emerald Isle Classic next fall, used St. Patrick’s Day as a launching point for a community-wide recycling drive to help fund the trip Thursday.

Members of the Notre Dame High band, which will also be making the 5,200-mile trip to Ireland, performed at the campus kickoff party, while dozens of other students donned green shirts in support of the campaign. Also unveiled were 50 new recycling bins placed throughout the sprawling Sherman Oaks campus that will be used specifically for the Ireland trip.

The goal of the drive is to raise between $15,000 and $20,000 during the next 18 months, said Paula Sheehan, assistant to Head Football Coach and Athletics’ Director Kevin Rooney. (Rooney was out of town Thursday and unavailable for comment.)

Notre Dame is one of four high schools in the United States that were invited to make the week-long trip to Ireland and play in the 2012 Emerald Isle Classic. The festivities culminate with a football game between the University of Notre Dame and the U.S. Naval Academy.

The Notre Dame High contingent is expected to number around 200, which includes 75 football players and coaches, 100 Irish Knight band members and 12 cheerleaders. The trip will cost each person around $2,500.

In addition to the recycling efforts, the football program has also begun selling sponsorship packages to local businesses to help support the trip. Sheehan said the idea of adding a recycling component to the fundraising drive was an obvious one for the school.

“Every kid has at least one can or bottle in their hand at some point during the day and that’s about 1,200 kids,” Sheehan said. “That’s a lot of kids. That plus with help from the parents and we should be able to at least get close to our goal.”

Member of the football team will handle the collection and reselling of the recycled goods, Sheehan said. Tentative plans are for five students a day to be assigned to spend about 30 minutes during their afternoon athletics’ class emptying and sorting the bins.

“The football team is taking this thing over and is pretty passionate about it for a lot of good reasons, not just the trip,” Sheehan said. “Hopefully this will continue even beyond when we come back from Ireland.”

Parents will also be able to contribute to the drive. Sheehan said plans are for parents to be able to drop off recyclables at the campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Other members of the community that want to help are asked to contact the campus so a drop off time can be scheduled. As the drive moves forward, there are plans to have a community day once a month in which residents of Sherman Oaks can contribute.

The Emerald Isle Classic was created to help promote the sport of American football in Ireland and also to attract tourists from the United States. It was previously held in 1988, 1989 and 1996.