On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, Charger football players have morning workouts during the offseason. Every few weeks, some of the players spend their free Wednesday mentoring boys at a local elementary school. “Guys with Ties” is just one way Hillsdale’s football team is giving back to the community. 

The program meets at Gier Elementary School once or twice a month. Junior Luke Costantino said each player is paired with the same group of students at every meeting. 

“It starts off every single meeting with having them tie their ties,” Constantino said. “After that we’ll go through good sportsmanship or setting the table at dinner or brainstorming ideas of how to talk, you know, what you can do around the school to really stand out and be above the rest. Look good, feel good, do good — that’s the motto of it.” 

Besides Guys with Ties, the football team is involved in National Reading Month, Victory Day, an annual youth camp, and, for the first time this year, Wreaths Across America. 

For National Reading Month in March, some of the players read to Reynolds Elementary School students. 

“We’ll wear the jerseys and then we’ll just read to a class of kids,” Costantino said. 

Senior Garrit Aissen said this is one of his favorite ways to serve the community. He said the kids’ eyes light up when they see the players. 

“It doesn’t matter if you’re the starter, it doesn’t matter if you barely play. It’s just, ‘You’re a football player!’” Aissen said.

Costantino said when he was younger he loved to go out and see even high school football players. 

“Just being in the position we are to have an impact on them is huge,” he said. 

Sophomore Ty Williams said one of his favorite outreach activities is Lilli’s Victory Day, an annual event for people in the community who have disabilities.  

“They get to come out, and for about an hour we have them on the football field. We show them around to our facilities, and then we run through different drills with them and allow them to kind of experience what life is like as a college football player,” Williams said. “You take it for granted how awesome it is to be a college football player, and it’s a great way to allow these other people to experience that.” 

Another annual community event is the youth camp the team puts on every summer just before school starts. The camp takes place on a Sunday in the Frank “Muddy” Waters Stadium about a week before most of the students come back to campus.

Senior Evan McGee, a running back for the team, said they get to talk with the kids for a while before taking them out on the field to try the different positions. 

“They get a chance to meet with us one-on-one, play catch, talk to us about football, talk to us about school, what it’s like to grow up around Hillsdale, and we can talk to them about where we’re from,” McGee said. “They’re always interested in that.”

Before spring break, the team helped pick up wreaths that had been placed on veterans’ graves as part of the Wreaths Across America program. 

Head coach Keith Otterbein said helping the community is a way the players live out the team’s core values of tradition, character, and service. 

“We try to create as many situations as we can as a football program for our players to understand the blessings that they have in their life and the opportunities to give back,” Otterbein said. 

Aissen said giving back to the community helps them focus on something much more important than football: their relationships with people in the community around them. 

“They do a lot for us,” Aissen said. “I mean, they go to every single one of our games. They always support us. So if we can give back to those who give to us, it’s super important. And it’s also humbling in a way. You realize there’s so much more to life than just football.”