STARKVILLE — While Mississippi State football players are often surrounded by cowbells and screaming fans at Davis Wade Stadium, on Wednesday, four members of the team faced a different kind of crowd at the Starkville Public Library.

About 50 children sat quietly around the players, listening intently as they read stories about football, being a team player and acting like a champion.

Athletes from Mississippi State University are visiting the library each week this summer to read to children and sign autographs. During the program’s first session on Wednesday, SPL Children’s Librarian Loraine Walker said the idea was born from a partnership between the library and a nonprofit that combines sports and reading to promote childhood literacy.

“We’re partnering with the nonprofit Champions for Literacy, and they’re bringing the Mississippi State athletes here to read with us and to promote literacy for the children,” Walker told The Dispatch. “Today we were lucky enough to have four MSU football players. We’re going to do this every Wednesday throughout the summer, same place, same time.”

Champions for Literacy partners with the Bulldog Initiative, the university’s name, image and likeness collective, to incorporate the athletes into local literacy initiatives with the hope players will inspire the next generation of readers.

Walker believes having the athletes read to children will motivate the kids in their own reading journeys.

“It’s so important to get children reading early, and these student athletes are role models for them,” she said. “To have them come read to them, interact with them and just show them that reading is fun, is so important to spark their interest and love for reading.”

The importance of those interactions isn’t lost on the athletes either. MSU linebacker Stone Blanton told The Dispatch he wasn’t the biggest fan of the library growing up.

“We would come to the library and do stuff like this, and I hated the library,” he said. “But having a football player there, it would have made me more excited to come to the library.”

For tight end Justin Ball, reading was a fundamental part of his childhood. He said his hope for the program is that kids at the library learn how fun reading can be.

“I was a huge reader as a kid,” Ball told The Dispatch. “With technology these days, a lot of kids don’t read anymore. But since it was a big part of my childhood, I want to just share that down to the next generation.”

The story times with athletes are a small part of the library’s overall summer programming, which includes other partnership efforts with MSU.

Walker said each Monday the library is hosting STEM programs for kids that bring in experts from different MSU departments, like chemical engineering, archaeology and meteorology.

MSU athletes will be reading at the library at 2 p.m. every Wednesday this summer except the first week in July. The program is free, and Walker encouraged kids from across the Golden Triangle to participate.

“Anyone is welcome to come,” she said. “You can come from Columbus, West Point, Macon and of course Starkville, but we’re delighted for anyone to come.”

McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.

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