If you walked into the basketball court in the Cameron Gym this past Saturday night, you might have been confused by the scene: Soccer goals set up on either end of the court, students piling on top of each other to grab seats in the bleachers, the scoreboard lit up and counting down, but not toward the start of a basketball game. Instead, time was ticking down on the 35th season of St. Andrew’s Indoor Soccer League (SAISL), a winter tradition dreamed up by Ruben Amarasingham ’91.

On the opening night of the nearly three-month long season, teams consisting of advisories, dorms, affinity groups, and friends began the winter-long journey toward the coveted chance to win the student tournament and play an all-employee team. In past years, the ultimate prize was bragging rights, but this year, one of the seniors in charge of the tournament turned SAISL into service.

Liam Robinson ’26, who manages SAISL concessions, realized that the league could do more than just provide entertainment in the winter. “The best way to get students to come to anything is food,” Robinson says. “I figured if we made the food into a fundraiser, not only would we be able to have another reason to come to SAISL, but it’d give more meaning to the game.” Robinson decided to use concessions sales to raise money to buy toys to donate to a local chapter of Toys for Tots, a charitable program run by the United States Marine Corps Reserve that collects  toys and distributes them as Christmas gifts to economically disadvantaged children.

As two advisory teams—Tower of Power and Profe’s Princesses (lead respectively by history teacher Melinda Tower and math teacher Jon Tower, and language teacher David Miller)—faced off in fierce competition, Robinson got busy selling Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. He was blown away by the overwhelming student support that accounted for 150 sandwiches sold and $350 raised. “It was so easy because people [here] want to do something good,” he says. 

Robinson sold sandwich after sandwich as football players scored goals on swimmers playing goalkeeper, and as freshmen defended their senior counterparts. Grade levels, different sports teams, different schedules or classes, it all disappears at SAISL. The tournament serves as an intentional student-led example of St. Andrew’s togetherness. That’s why Robinson believes the fundraiser was so successful. “Students were eager to take a simple moment to be part of something bigger than themselves,” he says. 

Robinson, along with some other SAISL leaders, headed to Target to purchase the toys and delivered them to Toys for Tots. “It’s the right thing to do at Christmas,” Robinson says. “SAISL gets people excited and engaged, and now it can be for something bigger than St. Andrew’s.”