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Golden Nuggets: Cal student-athletes volunteering to help local children

With College Sports Day and Read Across America, our Bears have been making time in their busy schedules to spend time with kids in the local community.

Bob Stanton-USA TODAY Sports

Wally Haas and the Coaching Corps worked with Cal Athletics on the seventh annual College Sports Day, showing underprivileged children all about the world of college athletics.

College Sports Day is put on by Coaching Corps, whose mission is to recruit and train college athletes and other community members to become volunteer coaches, mentors and role models for girls and boys in under-resourced communities.

For Cal's student-athletes, it appears they got just as much out of College Sports Day as the kids they were supposedly helping, if not more.

...

The 17 Cal sports represented spread out across the Haas Pavilion floor and set up drills for the kids to go through. Participants could do blocking drills with Cal linemen, work on their tumbling with the gymnastics teams or score a goal in soccer, among a variety of other things. Approximately 100 kids attended the event.

"At first, we had this one kid who was going through the drills. He was kind of timid and kind of shy," Cal wide receiver Jack Austin said. "But the more and more he went through it and the more he got to know us, it was really cool to see him light up and do a touchdown dance and have fun with it. It was really rewarding for me and all of the other football players who are here just to see the look on that kid's face."

Watch this video if and only if you enjoy super adorbz footage of kids trying new sports.

Our student-athletes also participated in Read Across America, reading to children in local elementary schools, presumably reading stories about fun adventures, colorful picture books, and Oski and the vile Stanfurd Cardinal.

Although there was one kid in that video who likes Stanfurd, so hopefully they didn't read too much to him...

A friendly neighborhood warning: with five Cal sports taking place on campus this Saturday, try to plan ahead to account for traffic and reduced parking

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