Boilermakers win annual blood drive; 5,164 pints donated

WEST LAFAYETTE -- Purdue University fans cheered their football team to a win Saturday during the Old Oaken Bucket game, but they also erupted in applause between the third and fourth quarters after the announcement that Purdue won the "IU vs. Purdue Blood Donor Challenge" by 182 pints.\nThe 8th annual blood drive, which ended Nov. 12, was a six-week long friendly competition between IU and Purdue students and alumni benefitting Indiana hospitals.\nPurdue supporters, who now lead the series 6-2, donated 2,673 pints, while IU donated 2,491 pints, according to a statement issued by the IU Alumni Association, a co-sponsor of the event with the Purdue Alumni Association, the Indiana Blood Center and the American Red Cross.\nLast year, Purdue won the blood drive by 21 pints.\nIn front of a crowd of more than 65,000 people at the game Saturday at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Mike Parejko of the Indiana Blood Center presented the Old Oaken Bucket trophy to Linda Carroll, blood drive coordinator for the Purdue Association of Indianapolis, and Todd Coleman, executive director of the Purdue Alumni Association.\nThe Old Oaken Bucket is a traditional, coveted award given to the winner of the IU and Purdue football game and is a symbol of the rivalry between IU and Purdue.\nCarroll smiled and raised the trophy above her head as Purdue fans applauded and cheered from the stands.\nKellie Cox, director of alumni clubs at Purdue, said the Purdue Alumni Association teamed up with student organizations to hold blood drives in West Lafayette. It also informed alumni of the drive and encouraged them to "bleed gold and black."\n"The thing about donating blood is that people either do it or they don't," Cox said. "So you gotta get those people that usually wouldn't go to get out there and donate. We made sure our alumni clubs knew about the competition and where they could donate."\nPurdue sophomore Erin Morris, a regular blood donor, said she donated blood during the drive on campus.\n"I donate because I want to," Morris said. "It doesn't really make a difference to me if it's for a competition or not, but yeah, if I helped Purdue win, then that's cool."\nJohn Hobson, senior vice president of the IU Alumni Association, said IU implemented the same strategy by sending e-mails to alumni and working with the Student Alumni Association to inform students of the drive.\nA few weeks into the drive, IU was losing by nearly 1,000 pints, Hobson said.\n"There were a lot of drives on campus in the last 10 days (of the competition) that really closed the margin from 1,000 to 200," Hobson said.\nIn the end, alumni and students donated a combined 5,164 pints for both schools, which broke last year's record by 143 pints.\nStatewide Indiana hospitals received the donated blood, which can help save lives of victims in many situations such as car crashes, transplants and burn injuries, according to a previous Indiana Daily Student article.\nHobson said even though IU lost, the drive was a success.\n"Every year we have a planning session during the summer, and we decided we wanted to beat last year's total. So the competition is sort of secondary," he said. "The real winners are the hospitals."\nHobson said both alumni associations have had informal talks of continuing expansion of the competition, which began eight years ago as an alumni-only competition in Indianapolis, to include more cities in northern Indiana.\n"We'd love to spread the blood drive farther north, but right now we don't have the resources to tie (new cities) in," Hobson said. "But we have the ambition to do it, so hopefully in the future we can do that."\nCox said she agreed that expansion of the healthy competition would be beneficial.\n"We want the word to spread," Cox said. "The more (blood) we get, the better we all shine on the field and off." \n-- Contact staff writer Lori Snow at losnow@indiana.edu.