Women's basketball junior guard Jasmine Harris, a Farmington Hills native, announced the initiative on Jan. 23 after the team's home game against Akron, asking the community to bring bottled water to the team's next home game on Jan. 30.

The men's basketball team and members of the community joined the cause, raising a total of 9,591 bottles of water to aid Flint residents affected by the city's water crisis.

More than a month later, the bottles remain "in storage" according to Associate Athletic Director for Marketing and Ticketing Mike Dabbs.

The team plans to hand deliver the bottles "very, very shortly," Dabbs said, but experienced logistical issues during the season that withheld the team from making the delivery to Eastern Michigan Food Bank.

According to CMU Athletics, the water will be delivered on Tuesday by CMU athletes.

The department has worked with the Flint-based organization in the past.

“The Eastern Michigan Food Bank was slammed during that time period when a lot of the celebrities and groups were delivering water," he said. "It was really, really difficult to match up a time when we were able to get in there and deliver.”

Women's basketball Head Coach Sue Guevara said she told Dabbs to wait until the season was over to make the delivery, after a previous scheduled delivery date fell through because Harris was unable to make the trip.

"The plan, I think initially, was to get it delivered earlier than have it sit where it is right now. But because of our schedule, to get everything in, we just couldn’t do it," Guevara said. "I wanted all of our kids to go, but between the hour and 45 minute (drive) there, then distributing, then coming back, somebody was going to miss class. I didn’t really want that either."

Guevara said it was important the team hand-delivered the water to serve as a lesson in giving back to the community.

“The Eastern Michigan Food Bank was slammed during that time period when a lot of the celebrities and groups were delivering water. It was really, really difficult to match up a time when we were able to get in there and deliver.”

-Mike Dabbs

Associate Athletic Director for Marketing and Ticketing

"When you look in the eyes of somebody you’re helping and see the gratefulness and thanks, I think that makes more of an impact," she said. "You’re doing something really good and you can feel good about it. We’re still going to be able to help the people of Flint. It’s just going to take us a little longer to deliver than what we anticipated."

Student-athletes have a unique opportunity and platform to evoke change in their campus communities, Harris said. She is proud of the team's efforts despite the delay in delivery.

"I think it's more important to deliver the water to Flint as a team, instead of one individual person. The fact that we are taking this down there together is what is most important," she said.

Millions of bottles of water have been donated to Flint since the city's man-made water crisis became a state-of-emergency on Jan. 5. The state alone has donated more than 176,000 bottles, while numerous public figures such as Warren native rapper Eminem, Detroit native rapper Sean Anderson (Big Sean) and actor Mark Wahlberg have also donated.