UW-Madison athletes from all sports teams will be in Library Mall for the fourth annual 48 Hour Practice through Wednesday.
The purpose of the practice is to raise money for the Blood:Water Mission, an organization that builds water wells and supports medical facilities in Africa.
To raise money, athletes ask passersby to donate. According to the event website, every dollar donated will provide one person with clean water for a year.
The 48-straight-hour practice began at noon Monday, with athletic teams taking one-hour shifts from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. All athletes are welcome after those shifts.
According to Scott Mottice, campus director for Athletes in Action, a group of Christian athletes that organized the event, it costs between $2,500 and $4,000 to construct each well. Over the past three years, Mottice said the 48 Hour Practice alone has raised $15,000.
Mottice said he and former UW-Madison football player Luke Swan began planning the event after hearing the $1 statistic at a Jars of Clay concert.
Mottice said over 250 athletes participate every year and they have been successful in attracting attention.
A lot of times, when the football team is out here, guys come by and think it's fun to catch a pass that a football player threw to them,"" he said. ""Or when the golfers are out here, people will want to make a putt and see if they can get closer to the imaginary hole than the golfers can.""
Around 6 p.m. Monday, three sophomore women's soccer players, Roxanne Carlson, Taryn Francel and Michele Dalton, passed around a ball.
""The cool thing about the athletes doing this is that everyone gets to see a little bit of what they do,"" Carlson said. ""And then it's all going toward a cause, so I think it's really neat.""
They said they were sometimes frustrated, though, by the difficulty of catching people's attention.
""Most people are kind of in their zone. I bumped into this one guy with headphones on, and I was like, 'Excuse me!' I had to take his headphones off,"" Francel said.
Dalton said sometimes they have to stretch out of their comfort zone to get people to pay attention.
""We are the trolls of the sidewalk,"" she joked.
