At the end of its first hour, the bone marrow drive put on by the University of New Hampshire football team on Monday had signed over 100 potential donors, easily.
With a table set up outside the entrance to Holloway Commons dining hall, the players stopped every hungry patron with an inviting smile.
"Did you help anybody today?" One of the team's coaches asked a hesitant student. "Why don't you help somebody today?"
At first glance, the mass of tall, broad-shouldered men dressed in their Wildcat jerseys seem out of place as they check donor forms and hand out cotton swabs and labels.
However, in no way are these guys strangers to community service.
"We like to be active," said junior Kyle Auffray.
In fact, just last weekend, the team members helped clean up Durham and surrounding areas, he said.
But this particular cause appeals to their competitive spirit.
The UNH football team is part of a conference-wide contest to add as many names to the National Bone Marrow Donor Program's list as possible. Currently, Yale is in the lead with over 700 potential donors.
And it seems that the Wildcat's game plan, which senior Chad Kackert jokingly described as "block[ing] the way," is working wonders.
Along with their recruiting strategy at HoCo, the team has been promoting the drive for weeks: mass emails have been sent, signs have been made, and an announcement on UNH's student-run radio station, WUNH, was scheduled for early Monday afternoon.
According to Freshman Teagan Morin, few people acknowledge the range of community service the football team does for Durham and the school itself.
"They don't get enough recognition," she said.
And although Morin did think that their "haggling" of the innocent bystanders doing homework or waiting for friends by the Panache couches was a little aggressive, both she and fellow freshman John Ditroia thought it was a necessary tactic.
"They have to do it - you have to let people know," said Ditroia.
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