Student-athletes from the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference recently helped “rebuild” the Twin Cities, and it was all in a day’s work.

The group of 19 MIAC student-athletes partnered for the first time with Rebuilding Together Twin Cities, the local affiliate of a national organization that preserves and revitalizes homes and communities, on a variety of projects at two St. Paul, Minnesota, homes.

The student-athletes warmed up by taking less than an hour to remove carpeting from one house, then tackled such projects as light plumbing and electrical work, cleaning, and fence repair. For good measure, they also fanned out through the neighborhood, collecting trash from streets – and that was just the morning’s work.

Rebuilding Together, which expected those jobs to take the group all day to finish, quickly arranged for student-athletes to help with more repairs at a second site. They cleaned, painted and moved furniture for an elderly homeowner, and left that house ready for the final stages of a remodeling project.

“It was incredible to see how much we accomplished in the (first) house in such a short time because of everyone’s phenomenal teamwork and support,” said Ashley Davenport, a member of the MIAC student-athlete advisory committee and an ice hockey student-athlete at St. Benedict. “Everyone did a great job and overall I thought the day was a huge success.”

The MIAC SAAC arranged the partnership with Rebuilding Together as one of its two annual community service projects.

“I thought the MIAC student-athletes did a great job at both sites and worked extremely hard all day,” said Brittany Feser, MIAC assistant director and event coordinator. “This was a great collaboration of all the institutions within the MIAC, and also a great opportunity for student-athletes to interact with individuals outside their own institutions.”

Davenport agreed, saying “I enjoyed meeting the student-athletes from other MIAC institutions and working with them to help a needy family repair their home.”

Matt Ten Haken, MIAC assistant executive director, provided information for this story.