FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Junior Sydney Cox, Auburn softball's team leader in community service hours, was honored Tuesday with a selection to the Southeastern Conference Softball Community Service Team.
The SEC sponsors Community Service Teams for all 21 league sponsored sports. The Community Service Team looks to highlight an athlete from each school who gives back to their community in superior service efforts.
Penta has now won eight SEC weekly honors over her career and has been tabbed SEC Pitcher of the Week five times in her career. Penta and Kristen Keyes (2002-04) are the only two Tigers in program history to win the award five times in their career.
Cox led the team in total hours of volunteering, primarily through serving on Auburn's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. As part of SAAC, she helps find different organization within Auburn and Opelika areas and is responsible for communicating details of community service events to her fellow student-athletes. She helps SAAC marketing initiatives to help promote community service opportunities.
She participated in five different team volunteering events throughout the 2022-23 academic year. She volunteered for the Auburn Downtown Trick-or-Treat, which allowed members of Auburn athletics to team up and interact with kids throughout the community during the Halloween event. Cox also helped coordinate Auburn softball's yearly "Toys for Tots" donation. The team used a large portion of NIL compensation to buy essentials like winters clothes as well as toys and bikes. The "Toys for Tots" event is her favorite event as she feels like every child should have a found memory of Christmas, no matter what their family or economic situation.
Cox has worked with the campus food pantry, which collects food for low-income students that attend Auburn so that they can solely focus on academics. She also participated in Operation Iron Ruck, another annual event where softball donates items to veterans that have returned to Auburn to finish their education. The team donates basic needs items like deodorant, toothpaste and used textbooks to help relieve some of the financial burden of returning to school. Cox also volunteered at Auburn's local humane society by handmaking dog toys.
On campus, she has assisted in college career fairs, checked in students, guided employers, and gave her peers words of encouragement/affirmation on stressful interview days.
After earning the double bye into the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament, Cox and Auburn open the postseason Thursday against the winner of No. 6 seed LSU vs. No. 11 seed Ole Miss. First pitch from Bogle Park in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is set for 10 a.m. CT on the SEC Network.
