Michigan football spent its lone off day of fall camp on something a little different than scheme work and conditioning: helping 20 kids from the Parkridge Community Center get ready for school.
With school starting next week for many in southeast Michigan, the Wolverines headed to a Meijer in Ann Arbor for an afternoon of back-to-school shopping. Each player was matched with a student and handed a $250 Meijer gift card to cover whatever they needed, whether that meant clothes, school supplies or both.
For Julia Martin, the mother of 12-year-old Mitchell Cook. Jr and 11-year-old Chase Cook, the outing carried extra weight.
Mitchell was paired with wide receiver Jaime Ffrench, while Chase shopped with edge rusher John Henry Daley. Martin said her sons have been Michigan fans since they started watching football, but she has never been able to afford tickets to a game or a camp.
A single mother living on disability because of hidradenitis suppurativa, a chronic and painful skin disease, Martin said the help landed at exactly the right time. She frequently has to go to the hospital, sometimes for more than a week, and her children stay with their "church family."
"It's a blessing," she said. "We're working off of one income ...
I have no financial help, I don't have the support, I don't have any of that. So when God sends things like this my way, I just feel so blessed. ...
[The kids] don't understand the bills come first, they have to be paid or we won't have a house.
"So this is just a blessing for us."
Michigan brought a long list of starters and key rotation players for the trip, including Daley, Ffrench, Andrew Marsh, Salesi Moa, Travis Johnson, Savion Hiter, Carter Meadows, Enow Etta, Dom Nichols, Jyaire Hill, Andrew Sprague, Chris Bracy Troy Bowles, Nate Owusu-Boateng, JJ Buchanan, Jonah Lea'ea, Cam Brandt, Zeke Berry, Zack Marshall and Nathaniel Staehling.
The players leaned into the assignment. Marsh said the mother and student he was paired with "knew just what they wanted" and that he mostly just followed along, pushing the cart and loading it up. Berry spent a few minutes with his student in front of the white T-shirts, talking through whether a crew cut or a V-neck made more sense, then checked the total on his calculator to keep the cart under budget.
Most pairs stayed close to the limit. Etta's student came in at just over $248, and Buchanan's landed at almost exactly $239.
Others pushed the envelope a little more. Marshall's student wound up above $420, forcing a reset at the register before the team scanned items in order of importance.
The carts filled up quickly with practical items: water bottles, socks, underwear, shoes, sweatshirts, jeans, journals, glue, lunch boxes, index cards, folders, paper, colored pencils and even goggles with a snorkel attachment so one student could learn how to swim.
Cheryl Harvey, Parkridge's director of programming, said a parent called her earlier in the week crying while explaining how much the event meant to her family. The chance to meet Michigan players was a bonus, but it mattered to the players, too.
"I used to see NFL players doing stuff like this, so it's always been my dream to do better for the youth," Hiter told the Free Press. "It's just great to get to bless these kids, bless these parents with an amazing opportunity."
Meijer is one of three sponsors that will advertise inside Michigan Stadium this fall.
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