Jeremy McLaughlin keeps two boxes of Nutri-Grain bars in his car at all times so that if he sees a homeless person on a street corner holding up a sign asking for food, he can roll down the window and give them something to eat.
“I can’t give $5 to every person I see because I’d be right out there with them,” McLaughlin said. “But what I can give, I try to give.”
McLaughlin has a history of generosity.
After graduating from high school in 2003, McLaughlin turned down a college wrestling scholarship to go to Namibia, Africa on a three-month long mission trip to help care for AIDS victims. Last year, after Thailand was devastated by a tsunami, McLaughlin, a sophomore on the Oregon wrestling team, skipped his spring term of school to help with the tsunami relief effort in Asia. To date, he’s completed seven mission trips.
This summer, he will take on one more.
Christ Hope International, a Christian-based group that works to help curb the spread of AIDS in Africa, has enlisted McLaughlin’s help to start the first grassroots wrestling club in Namibia.
McLaughlin is excited about his opportunity to return to Africa – something he says he’s been wanting to do for a long time.
“This is just a chance to go out and help change people’s lives,” McLaughlin said. “Just to help someone other than myself, and I can’t ignore that”
Originally, McLaughlin had planned to spend his summer working and training in Eugene. But two weeks ago, Jos Holtzhausen, a former South African national wrestling champion and the international coordinator of Christ Hope International – whom McLaughlin met on his first mission trip to Namibia – contacted McLaughlin and asked if he’d be interested in helping to start a wrestling club for children in Namibia.
McLaughlin pounced on the idea because it would give him an opportunity to combine the two things he loves most in life – wrestling and helping others.
“Wrestling is the main focus for me going over there, but I’m also going to volunteer my time to fix up the orphanage, hang out with the kids there, and just do everything I did on my first trip,” McLaughlin said. “This is one of the highest impacted countries in the world as far as the AIDS crisis goes, so any kind of hope, anything that can help them get by would be huge.”
Holtzhausen has already found a benefactor in Namibia who will help finance most of the project, but McLaughlin will be tasked with actually setting up the mat room, running a clinic to teach the benefactor and several of his helpers basic wrestling moves to enable them to keep the program going even after he leaves, and then putting together a camp for kids to come learn to wrestle.
“One of the things I noticed from being over there the first time was that it’s a very aggressive culture,” McLaughlin said. “Even when kids play, they play over there like we would fight over here. Kids jump on each other, kids get in a dispute and they just throw rocks at each other, no holds barred.
“So we thought this might just be a good outlet, a good way to channel that energy and at the same time, there’s a lot of doors that can be opened with this.”
McLaughlin believes even things as simple as the showers at the wrestling facility will go a long way toward helping a small section of an impoverished, AIDS-stricken republic where the average life expectancy is 48 years.
“The showers will be huge because that gives a chance for a lot of these kids who probably don’t shower a whole lot to get clean,” McLaughlin said. “Some people have already contacted me about donating wrestling gear and that’s great because we can have the kids come in, we’ll issue them gear to work out in, they can wrestle in that while we wash their clothes, then they shower down, put their own clean clothes back on and we take their wrestling gear and wash it.”
The Oregon wrestling team has already agreed to donate some wrestling gear to the cause and McLaughlin hopes to take four or five big duffel bags worth of wrestling equipment with him to Africa this summer.
But first he has to figure out how he’s going to get there.
Plane ticket: $3,000; Summer experience: priceless
A plane ticket to Namibia will cost approximately $3,000 and McLaughlin is trying to raise money to pay for his passage. Due to NCAA restrictions, the Athletic Department cannot offer McLaughlin any financial assistance, so he will have to raise the full amount on his own.
“It’s going to be expensive. Not only am I paying to go over there, but I’m not working over here,” said McLaughlin, who walked onto the wrestling team last year and is one of the few athletes wrestling without a scholarship. “The fundraising is always hard, but at the same time it’s a chance to get the word out and to meet people and interact. It always comes together in the end.”
Aside from fundraising, McLaughlin has also sought the help of friends and coaches in the local wrestling community to learn more about coaching young wrestlers. He says he would rather arrive in Namibia in July properly educated and prepared to deal with any problems that might arise than to “just be immature and naive and say that I’ll just figure it out when I get there.”
McLaughlin’s coach doesn’t seem to think he’ll have any problems.
“I’ve known Jeremy since he was a sophomore in high school,” Oregon coach Chuck Kearney said. “He’s a leader in our program and he’s compassionate about the people around him. He leads by example and he’s a a blue-collar type of wrestler who’s had to fight through a lot of adversity.
“He’s an intelligent kid, he’s worked in camps and clinics, he’s seen how practices are held and he’s been trained to do this as a wrestler. He will just be fulfilling a different role in Africa than the one he’s held in the past.”
McLaughlin is eager to begin spreading his love for a sport that has enriched his life for many years.
“We have a huge advantage as Americans because we have so much,” McLaughlin said. “If I want to find a wrestling club to train at, I just Google it and there it is. It’s a lot bigger here than it is over there, so this is a huge opportunity for them.”
So far, the trip to Namibia is shaping up to be a solo mission, but McLaughlin says he’s open to the idea of having willing volunteers come along as long as they’re aware of what they’re getting into.
“They’re gonna see poverty, they’re gonna see sick kids half dressed and weeping, they might see death. They’re gonna see a country that’s literally been destroyed by disease, and they’re gonna see a whole other culture,” McLaughlin said. “If you’re not sensitive to that, it can be a problem for both sides, but if you are and you’re able to understand and work with people, it’s going to be an experience that’s amazing and stretching and growing and fulfilling and sobering all at once. I can’t say enough about it.”
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YOU CAN HELP
Oregon wrestler Jeremy McLaughlin needs to raise $3,000 to go to Namibia this summer to help start the first Namibian wrestling club for underprivileged children. To contribute to the cause, contact McLaughlin at (541) 282-4476 or [email protected].
UO athlete Jeremy McLaughlin wrestles poverty and AIDS in Africa, worldwide
Daily Emerald
May 30, 2007
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