CHARLOTTESVILLE (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — Two members of the UVA cheer team were on hand at the UVA Health Medical Center on Thursday to help participate in the “Babies with Books” Read-a-thon, a yearly competition between NICUs designed to promote reading to babies and its benefits.

“Reading is a great way to help with brain and language development in our babies,” Anna Claire Fotopoulos, a registered nurse with the unit, said, “and it’s a great way for all of our NICU parents to bond with their babies. But we also have our doctors, speech, occupational and physical therapists, respiratory therapists and volunteer cuddler reading to our babies as well.”

This is UVA’s third year participating in the competition, which looks to see which NICU can read the most books to their babies in 10 days. While they have yet to win, the unit did read over 1700 books to their patients, outperforming their performance the previous year, in which the unit read over 500 books.

To help out the unit on their last day were two UVA cheerleaders, second year Kylie McGee and third year Hannah Grau. Community events like this are not uncommon for the cheer squad, McGee said, as involving the Charlottesville community is one of their main jobs outside of going to football and basketball games.

For this particular opportunity, McGee said she was the first to volunteer when her coach reached out to the team.

“I’m actually a pre-med student here,” she shared, “so I’m really excited to be in the hospital and just see all the babies in the NICU, and I’m actually thinking about going into neonatology in the future.”

Grau, who’s in her first year on the team, said she was drawn to this opportunity by her love for philanthropy and community outreach, as well as the chance to meet new people and make a difference.

“The opportunity arose, and I was beyond thrilled to take it,” she said. “Any opportunity, no matter what department it is, I’m happy to be a part of and help out in any way I can.”

While at the hospital, the two read books to Marion, a two-week old baby staying at the NICU. Her parents were neck-and-neck with another family for most books read in the unit in the final hours of the competition, having read over 200 in the 10-day span. Marion’s mother, Sarah Borgatti, said the competition has been a “great kind of distraction” during their time in the unit.

“We’ve read books that were my books that I liked when I was little,” she said. “All sorts of different things, so it’s been fun to get to read those stories and see them again.”

Borgatti said the competition has helped her interact with other people in the unit and share a bit about what’s going on in each other’s lives outside of the “medical, everyday things.” She was also happy to have the cheerleaders over to read to her baby.

“It’s really wonderful to see how all aspects of the UVA community come together to support each other,” she said.