GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Tucked away in a nondescript room in the back of Grand Rapids Community College’s Ford Field House, decades of the school’s athletic history sits in dusty boxes and in neat stacks on the floor.
The trophies, plaques, pictures and everything in between – some of it dating back to the 1970s – are relics of accomplishments past, and items GRCC now wants in the hands of those who earned them.
“This is a great project,” said Lauren Ferullo, the school’s athletic director, as she sorts through a stack of plaques in a corner. “Trying to get those to those student-athletes, I think, would be awesome.”
Ferullo is relatively new to the job - she started back in July. Almost immediately, she and field house director Whitney Marsh began cataloging the items one by one, making a master list of who won what. The school is now in the process of reaching out to student-athletes, and vice versa, to get the items reclaimed.
“We’ve already had a few emails from former coaches, a couple student-athletes, so it’s working,” said Ferullo. “It’s not fair to those student-athletes that got the recognition that it’s just sitting in a box when it could be sitting on their mantle.”
Ferullo says for many years, only the schools got copies of awards, not the athletes. While some of the newer team awards adorn the walls of the newly renovated section of the fieldhouse, these awards, Ferullo says, belong to the athletes who earned them.
If you’re a former GRCC student-athlete and want to reclaim an award or check to see if you have one, call the school’s athletic department at 616-234-3990 or visit them online here.
