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Every day student athletes are faced with a variety of choices.  CLICK FOR VIDEO Whether to go to practice, class, when to do their homework or workout, but those seem simple because most of those choices don't come with peer pressure.  And as Katherine Tompkins, a Mercyhurst College softball player explains, peer pressure can be hard to escape, "any sports team or any student at a college is going to be faced with the choices of whether to drink or not, peer pressure and I think that when students have the resources of other alternatives and they know why it [peer pressure] happens its an enlightenment for any student."

And it's giving student athletes resources and the knowledge of prevention that's the goal of the NCAA's 'CHOICES' grant.  This year, Mercyhurst College was one of the 15 NCAA schools who were chosen to receive the three-year, 30-thousand-dollar grant.  This grant not only funds alcohol prevention teachings but the NCAA also offers resources to the schools, such as Monday night's speaker, Dr. Jared Spencer.  Dr. Spencer is a sports psychologist who has been working with CHOICES program for a few years.  And when asked how targeting student athletes can help the student body as a whole he stated, "these student athletes can become the leaders to model and have other follow [their lead]" said Dr. Spencer. "When a university intentionally tries to shift a culture through positive proactive programming it does work."

It will take years to know what affect, in numbers, this program had on the school but it seems that after only one session the student athletes already believe 'CHOICES' is a positive, "it gives us the techniques we need to help a situation with a teammate who is having a drinking problem or having just another problem you need some techniques to handle the situation," said Lauren Rinaca, a Mercyhurst field hockey player. 

"If the athletes can make good decisions than its going to trickle down," said Tompkins.