Step Forward Recap: Men's Volleyball
9/12/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Volleyball
Step Forward Day began in 1988 when two Pepperdine students recognized the need for volunteers in the local community and sought to encourage service among their peers. The projects began as small acts of service from helping to repair homes of local senior citizens to planting gardens at
The Pepperdine men’s volleyball team worked at the Thousand Oaks YMCA. Here is an account of the day’s events by senior outside hitter J.D. Schleppenbach (
“We went to the Smothers parking lot, got signed up, got on the bus and found out that we were going to the Thousand Oaks YMCA. We were there to do some maintenance. There were about 40-45 people from Pepperdine there, and about eight helpers from the YMCA. We had about 19 or 20 volleyball players.
“They were ready for us when we got there. They had some groups working on a pool. A lot of people were painting. Our guys did a lot of clean up and manual labor outside. I think they picked us out because we have some big guys. It was kind of a hilly area with a lot of pine trees so we swept up a lot of the parking lots to make it look nicer. There were some little patio areas that we swept up. A lot of the dirt had eroded onto the roads and had narrowed the roads, so we dug out a lot of dirt and pulled a lot of weeds on the hill. We got a lot done. At the end what they told us was that what we got done in a day would have taken them about a month. So it was really cool to see that change.
“This was my fourth Step Forward. It’s really cool because you see all this hard work that the people at these places put in, and how much they care. They invite us to come back any time. It’s great to see the people that are involved in it and how these projects affect them. Some of the guys hate waking up early to go to this, but at the end of the day everyone gets so much satisfaction about doing it. That’s a nice thing to see.”
