Matt & Daisy the Cow
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart and Daisy the Dairy Cow teamed up Friday in Scottsdale to encourage Navajo Elementary School students to eat healthy. Students from Navajo’s Breakfast Club, a program that offers students free breakfast and day care in the morning, won the visit through a Dairy Council of Arizona drawing. About 80 third-graders and a few older students cheered as Leinart and the cow mascot, who stopped to give several students hugs, entered the school’s cafeteria. Leinart and Laura Trujillo, director of nutrition services for the Dairy Council, started by quizzing the students on milk facts, explained that chocolate milk has all the nutrients white milk does and encouraged healthy diets.
“I always drank, honestly, at least three glasses of milk a day,” Leinart said. Leinart then answered students’ questions about what it’s like to be a football player. “A lot of guys bend the rules, trying to win the game,” he said. “But it’s all for fun, really.” Sixth-grade students Dominic Bergs and Jordan Coomber said they were excited to meet Leinart. “My heart was, like, going,” Jordan said. The two students got to interview Leinart for “Bear Essential News,” a newspaper made up of articles written by elementary school students around the state. They said Leinart answered a variety of questions.
About 170 students attend Navajo’s Breakfast Club, which started about 1 1/2 years ago, said principal Clay McAllester. Navajo is a Title I school — 50 percent of its students qualify for free and reduced price lunch programs — and a lot of parents don’t have time to make breakfast, McAllester added.
