photo by: Courtesy of Nick Detrano

KU baseball players and Lawrence Home Depot employees help construct a brand new shed at Ballard Center in Lawrence. The project was spearheaded by Mass St. Collective as a way to give back.

A partnership between Home Depot and the Mass St. Collective — the group that represents many Kansas Jayhawk student-athletes in name, image and likeness ventures — gave back to the Lawrence community on Friday by constructing a shed to house play equipment for the Ballard Center.

KU baseball players, local Home Depot employees and Josh Baker, the facilities director at the Ballard Center, a local nonprofit that works with individuals and families to achieve stability through early childhood education, helped construct a new shed to replace the center’s old one.

Kyle Roggenkamp, Ballard Center’s executive director, said the project was started by Patrick Sullivan, the director of operations and business development for Mass St. Collective, after he heard about the center’s need for an improved storage shed during a previous meeting.

Roggenkamp said the shed stored “gross motor skill play equipment” — toys like tricycles or bicycles that can help children develop hand-eye coordination and balance. He said the old shed was decades old and “falling apart” because of termite damage, making the equipment less safe. Roggenkamp said Home Depot donated all the materials needed for the shed and the labor, helping the nonprofit greatly.

“It will help keep that equipment safe, clean and dry without costing us a dime,” Roggenkamp said.

It’s a continuation of the Mass St. Collective and Home Depot giving back to the Ballard Center. This summer, as the Journal-World reported, KU football players helped build three garden planters on site that will be used to grow fruits, vegetables and flowers.

Roggenkamp said the shed will be able to store some of the gardening tools for those planters, and the center is already seeing the fruit of its labor after they had the first mini-harvest of produce this fall. Roggenkamp said all of that went back to help feed the kids at the center.

The athletes not only gave a hand to help construct the shed, but also helped out in the pre-K classrooms through an interactive art project and playtime learning sessions.

Roggenkamp was appreciative of the effort of the Mass St. Collective and Sullivan, saying their help and immediate work to fulfill one of the center’s needs was a “beautiful thing.”

“Pat (Sullivan) spearheaded the project; we’re just the lucky folks to benefit,” Roggenkamp said.

photo by: Courtesy of Nick Detrano

KU baseball players working with pre-k students at the Ballard Center in Lawrence.