Team wins AHA walk for the second year

A group representing Seton Hall recently won the American Heart Association Heart Walk fundraiser for the second year in a row.

The team, captained by senior Sean Riordan, officially consisted of six members though it had a great deal of support from the members of the Alpha Sigma Phi and Alpha Phi Omega fraternities and the Alpha Phi sorority.

The AHA Heart Walk is a year-long event held at various locations throughout the country. The event focuses on improving healthy eating, physical activity and children's health.

According to the AHA web­site, the money raised by the Heart Walk program go toward funding doctors' research, raising aware­ness of pediatric heart and stroke problems and distributing health information and tips to the public.

"It was a rewarding experi­ence," Riordan said. "If we get the opportunity next year, we'll definitely do it again."

Riordan said that this sort of event "calls for the whole campus, not just individuals" to band to­gether and support the event.

The team raised funds on cam­pus, primarily through a bake sale held in October 2012. They were sponsored by Kevin Cummings, a Leadership Honors Program councilman, who matched the funds they raised with a donation to the University.

Riordan said he was not sure exactly how much was raised, but that the figure was more than $3,000.

Also influential in the organi­zation of the team was Stephanie Gonzalez, a junior in the Stillman School of Business.

According to Gonzalez, Seton Hall's team competed against var­ious New Jersey schools includ­ing Rutgers University, Montclair State University, Drew University and a handful of other local insti­tutions.

When Riordan was too busy to perform the duties of team cap­tain, which he said was often, par­ticipants looked to Kenny Lenoci, the current president of Alpha Sigma Phi at Seton Hall.

In fact, Riordan said, Lenoci was the one on the front lines most of the time.

Mike Reuter, the faculty advi­sor for the team, oversaw all of the group's activities from the top.

According to Riordan, though they were the most successful at raising money to support the event, the team did not actually at­tend the walk.

"Everybody in our fraternity has to do 10 hours of community service a year," he said. "By then we were so busy planning another event that we didn't have the time to actually go to the walk."

Joseph Groagan can be reached at joseph.grogan@stu­dent.shu.edu.