MIAMI – The FIU Student-Athlete Leadership Council (SALC), led by softball standout Bailey Grossenbacher, once again helped lead an initiative this holiday season to benefit Operation Christmas Child, which provides gifts for children in need.
 
Panthers' athletic programs and student-athletes collected 1,339 gift boxes to distribute to children throughout the world during the 2024 holiday season. 
 
Each box is tagged with a QR code that can be scanned to see where each gift box was sent.  The total number of boxes is more than double what FIU Athletics provided last holiday season.
 
"This is something I have been doing since high school and I wanted to bring it to FIU," Grossenbacher said.  "This is our third year and last year we collected 578 and we are over 1,000 boxes this year as a community which includes 663 boxes from FIU student-athletes.  This means a lot to me, especially around the holidays, to give back to the community and get everyone involved."
 
Empty gift boxes were distributed to each FIU Athletics program to fill with gifts and return before they were sent to local churches for distribution to children.
 
The initiative has been so successful that all other Conference USA schools were inspired to participate in the program as well through each athletic department's Student Athlete Leadership Council (SALC).