Until six weeks ago Lilian DeSilva didn't know beans about the game of Rummy. But since being introduced to Eulean Vaughn at Campbellsville's Medco Center, DeSilva has been learning the hard way.

"Look at that score," DeSilva said pointing to a tally sheet. "I don't think she has taught me all the rules."

DeSilva, who is a sophomore from Brazil, her coach, and five of her Campbellsville University volleyball teammates, volunteer each Monday afternoon at Medco - playing games and assisting the staff with visits and filling ice and water bottles.

"We do whatever is needed," said Samantha James, a sophomore from Louisville. "We check in on them and have made some pretty good friends."

It has been a win-win for everyone.

"I just felt like it was a good idea for us to volunteer somewhere," said coach Amy Eckenfels, who just recently volunteered her head of hair to St. Baldrick's Shaving to Cure Kids' Cancer. " We had a meeting, Medco needed volunteers and the girls really seem to like it."

On the same Monday teammate Caroline Martin is playing Rummy with James Mattingly. She's winning, which prompts Mattingly to say: "I must have taught her too good."

That comment doesn't necessarily jive with what the girls have been jokingly whispering under their breath - that their opponents are withholding Rummy strategy so that their Medco volunteers don't get too adept.

"I'm just a lot older," jokes Vaughn. "I guess experience has something to do with it."

"This has been really nice," said Martin, who is also from Brazil. "It makes me think of my grand mom. I miss my family and this is a way for me to connect with them in a vicarious way. Some of these people don't have any family to visit them."

"I can tell you that I really look forward to them being here," said Mattingly.

Martin said that when she was at Northwest College in Wyoming, before transferring to Campbellsville, that the team there would visit a nursing home and the residents would attend all their home games.

Caroline Martin and James Mattingly

DeSilva and Martin agree that Rummy is foreign to them. But the impact the defending volleyball team is having isn't foreign to the residents of Medco or themselves.

"We've done other community projects, but this one has been special," said Brooke Marcum, a junior from LaGrange, Ky. "I've lost both sets of my grandparents and being able to develop relationships with these folks has been good."

Marcum says the visits allow her to reconnect the relationship she had with her grandparents.

"Our visits really makes them happy," said Marcum. "I know it can be boring here sometimes and it does us and them good to just sit around a talk and listen to their stories."

"It gives you a really good feeling to know that you're giving them company and making them happy," said Shannon Cahill, a sophomore from Louisville. "Seeing them each week and watching them improve ... just makes me feel connected."

Caitlin Dresing, a freshman from Louisville, said volunteering like this isn't something new for her. "Our high school team made similar visits to a nursing home in Louisville and we painted fingernails and played cards."

"Whatever their needs are, we do," said Eckenfels. "Right now this fits perfectly into what we want to do and eventually we may want to split up and go into some of the schools and work with a younger set of people."

But even if the girls were to become professional Rummy players, the Medco residents would invite them back with open arms.

"When I first got here I didn't feel like meeting many people," admitted Vaughn. "But now I so look forward to Monday afternoons."

Story & Photos by Richard RoBards