Time and a passion can be a beautiful combination. Georgetown College football player Branden Leff is discovering this.
The junior wingback has tallied most of his yards for the Tigers on out routes for five catches and 60 yards. In July he wants to go the distance – hopefully 13.1 miles or more.
Leff started a GoFundMe – Run for a Change – and will run a mile for every 80 dollars donated to his cause. All donations will go to NAACP and Feeding America to combat racial discrimination and hunger in this time of civil unrest and COVID-19.
Georgetown College football player Branden Leff started a GoFundMe – Run for a Change – and will run a mile for every 80 dollars donated. All donations will go to NAACP and Feeding America to combat racial discrimination and hunger.
“This idea came about a month and a half ago,” Leff said. “It started with doing something to help our communities negatively affected by COVID-19 and expanded to include another passion of my, supporting a change in racial discrimination.”
So the desire and ideas were in place, but now it was figuring out how to get others involved and make a bigger ripple of awareness.
“The donations will do lots of good things for both organizations, which meets the basic needs right away. Beyond that, I hope this raises awareness, gets people thinking and talking. That is how true change happens,” Leff said. “Figuring out a way to inspire people to get behind my mission meant stretching my own limits.
“I am a sprinter, essentially, on the football field with short receiving routes or sometimes rushing the ball. So a new challenge was long distance running.”
With a lot of extra time on his hands once Georgetown moved to an online model and students were moved off campus, Leff focused in on his studies but also wanted an athletic challenge. He started distance running and fell in love with it. In the past two months, he has occasionally run 10-plus miles at a time. His desire to help and his passion to run seemed a good fit with his idea and thus was born Run for a Change.
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“I believe it is important to help those in need,” Leff said. “With extra time to think on things, it started to come to me ‘Who are we if we continue to sit back and not try to make a change?’ Another thing made me want to start was this quote I recently heard: ‘There is a difference in being motivated and being motivated and taking action.’ I am ready to put action behind the difference I want to make.
“Then getting others passionate to want to support me in this mission was the incentive that I’ll run for every $80 contributed. Now I’ve got the goal set at $1,000, which would equal 12 miles, but as a thank you I’ll probably do 13.1 miles all at once which is a mini-marathon.
“The GoFundMe is up through the beginning of July and I’d love to see my goal met and exceeded.”
In just three days, Leff has exceeded his goal and has 19 days left in the campaign. He plans to run his donation marks around his hometown of Taylorsville at a nearby park, posting updates with pictures and videos on social media.
“This run will not be easy, but that isn’t the idea,” Leff said. “I needed to take action, wanted it to be challenging and always reminding myself people are going through much worse.”
The link to go donate is here.
From Georgetown College
