GEORGE STEVENS OF CENTRE COLLEGE, a junior on the men's swimming and diving team, has been selected the SCAC Character & Community Male Student-Athlete-of-the-Week for the week ending December 6, 2009.

Stevens, who is a member of the Phi Delta Fraternity and an active member of the Student Government, has been volunteering as a coach at the youth soccer level in his community for several years.

While coaching, he wondered why his team seemed to be totally comprised of upper-class kids. This led him to go to the lower income housing of Danville: Bate-Wood, the government subsidized housing development. Like the homes, the neighborhood park was in shambles and he decided to pursue improving it. The Bate-Wood Park Community Project was founded, and is run by Stevens and six other students at Centre. The goal is to renovate the physical aspects of the park, which consisted at the time of a rusting playground, two cracked and goal-less basketball courts, and open fields to foster a sense of community ownership and pride surrounding the new park by getting the community involved in the process. They started by launching a survey to see what people living around Bate-Wood wanted to see, and haven't looked back.

To date, Stevens has helped raise almost $50,000 in donations of money, time, and material. They have installed a swing set, a "superdome" climbing structure, a large playground, three animal spring-riders, a set of lily pad climbers, and a toddler swing. In addition he has helped to have built a 20' x 20' gazebo; and have installed a soccer field, complete with immovable regulation size goals.

None of this would have been possible without extensive help from both the Centre and Danville communities, and large monetary donations from Centre's Student Government Association and the Danville City Commission. Future plans are under way to beautify the park with flowers, trees, and shrubberies. They also intend to build a hummingbird garden and mediation maze, along with totally redoing grilling areas and the existing basketball courts. It is a project that started with a wild and crazy notion, and certainly will not be done by the time Stevens graduates, but despite this, it has been his single most rewarding experience at Centre.

"George has been one of our success stories," Centre head swimming coach Dean Brownley said.

"He came in as a little bit of a project swimmer and has turned out to be one of our scoring Flyers at conference. He is a very hard worker and is developing great leadership skills to go along with his swimming ability,"  Brownley finished.

A junior from Columbus Ohio, Steven's specialty is Butterfly.