The strength of the pack that is the St. John’s cross country team has been more than apparent the past couple of weeks.

Senior Michelle Duffy, a veteran member of the team, founded a fundraiser called the St. John’s Hurricane Sandy Relief, which is an effort to collect items for victims of the disaster.

“Most of our team is from the New York area, so we thought that it would be a good idea to get a fundraiser going throughout, not just the school, but other universities, as well,” Duffy said.

Fordham and the University of Buffalo have also sent in donations, while Duffy said that the University’s baseball, tennis and women’s soccer teams have joined the cross-country team’s donating efforts.

Duffy explained that the team will distribute collected items to some of the most severely affected areas of New York, which also happens to be where she, and a number of her teammates, are from.

“We’re going to donate to the Rockaways, Long Beach and Staten Island,” Duffy said. “Some of our girls from
Staten Island lost people that they knew.”

The team has a donation box set up outside the concession stand at Carnesecca Arena, where students, faculty, or
anyone who wishes to help, can donate.

“We’re collecting everything from food, blankets, old clothes and shoes, garbage bags to cleaning supplies” Duffy said. “We also need help distributing, so if people have cars, we can give them locations.”

Duffy and her teammates did not list a specific number of items that they wanted to collect before they began their efforts – they simply wanted to make a difference.

“We just want to help those affected,” Duffy said. “Instead of sitting here and sympathizing for them, we figured that it’d be better to get out there. Our team motto this year is ‘and the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of
the wolf is the pack,’ so we thought we’re only as strong as our peers are, and our peers are only
as strong as we are.”