During the ‘22 – ‘23 school year, CSD’s fourth period Civics class spontaneously founded a sock drive.  Logan Cain (‘25), who was taught by Ms. Connie Wessner, took the helm. Promoted by guest speaker and owner of Davidson’s Ben & Jerry’s, Karen Toney, he put a plan in place that included collecting socks from each advisory.

Over nine days that first December, the competition between advisories collected and donated 3,439 socks to The Odd Sock. 

Socks are the number one requested item at homeless shelters and The Odd Sock’s goal is to help fill that need. Odd Sock’s original concept was based upon the idea that everybody has that one sock that lost its pair in the wash and seemingly has no use. Rather than throw them away, The Odd Sock collects and donates those mismatched socks. Now, the organization has morphed into gathering socks that are both new and used.

After seeing the wild success of the first drive, Cain decided to recreate the charitable contest for a second year.

“After hosting the sock drive in 2022, I realized how easy of a project it was to take on. It took some communicating and a bit of planning but there wasn’t that much to it,” said Cain. “I thought about it and realized if I wanted to do the drive again in 2023 I wouldn’t have to do much more than send out a few emails. I know the sock drive made an impact on our community and the effort is totally worth the outcome. So I decided to host the drive again this school year.”

The event is a competition between the CSD advisories, groups of students paired with a teacher who eat lunch together on Wednesdays and work on projects in the community during CSD’s Service Fridays. 

After Cain set the dates and made the necessary preparations for this year’s drive, advisories went to work. Cain and event volunteers passed out bags on November 7th, challenged each advisory to collect as many socks as possible and collected the full bags on the 17th.

The advisory that collected the most socks again won a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream party during an Wednesday advisory lunch.

An email blast to the entire school just before lunch on the eighth alerted CSD’s community that competition was beginning. Then Cain went to work. 

He encountered a few hiccups at the chaotic start.

“I was stuck passing out bags the day that the drive was intended to start,” said Cain. “Counting eighth grade and high school advisories, I had over forty bags to pass out. That was a busy day of running classroom to classroom.”

With the sock drive underway, teachers and students spent the next eight school days collecting and donating as many socks as possible. 

“The main goal is to get as many socks as possible to help people,” said Owen Hamilton (‘25). “But the ice cream is a nice bonus.” 

As the donations piled in and Friday the 17th approached, teachers such as Mr. Anthony Yodice sent out reminders to their students to bring in socks. His was one last effort to make the drive as successful as possible.

The final bell rang on Friday and the competition came to a close. Each advisory delivered their bag (or bags) to the front desk.

Cain stayed after school that day to tally the numbers.

“I ran into a slight issue when I began running into donations that weren’t socks. Somehow donations of gloves, hats, tennis balls and headbands made it to our drive. I had no clue what to do with these donations and eventually just put them into our school lost and found,” said Cain.

Despite the occasional oddity in the donation bags, this year’s drive was a roaring success. The Odd Sock received a total of 3,079 socks which they then distributed to those in need.

That Sunday, November 19th, Ms. Leslie Bragg, upper school student life leader, sent out an email announcing the three highest sock-collecting advisories. 

“In third place, with a valiant effort, we had Ms. Pavlovic’s advisory with 393 socks! Second, we had strong competition with the 607 socks from Ms. McMillan’s advisory! Finally, in first place, winning the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream party, we have Ms. Kailey’s advisory with an incredible 874 socks!” 

With two outstanding drives completed, Cain now looks to make the competition an annual event.

“I would love to pass the event on for someone else to host once I graduate. I am hoping to find someone who may be interested in helping me run everything next year to give them some experience with the event before I pass it off,” said Cain. “It can be challenging to find the students best fit to organize an event but I trust I will be able to find someone or a small group of people who will be able to take it over.”

He does have a just-in-case fallback.

“If I am unable to find anyone to continue the event I’m sure I can force my sister, Abbey, to run it for at least a year!” Cain said with a smile..

For two years straight, CSD and the Spartan family, especially the student advisories, have changed the local community and aided those in need by donating socks. The seemingly simple gesture has a life-changing meaning. Hopes are high of keeping up the awesome tradition of charity, friendly competition and ice cream alive. All it takes is one odd sock with seemingly no place to go.