And while the Aggies may have outdone the Wildcats once again, the community at large is the ultimate winner.

According to Michael Smauldon, executive director of the American Red Cross Northern Utah Chapter, USU’s collection period netted 314 units of blood donated while the collection period for WSU netted 220 units.

He told the Standard-Examiner last week that response was overwhelming.

“The turnout was quite amazing,” he said. “I will say we, as the American Red Cross, are going to have to make some adjustments for next year on making sure that we can capture the excitement and capacity of how many people wanted to donate. All appointments were filled and (we had) tons of walk-ins. We had so many people who wanted to donate and participate that this year that we just didn’t have the staffing to be able to capture it all, which is exciting. That’s great news. That lets us know that the communities around both schools were pretty fired up and that we are going to make some adjustments to make sure that we can capture that next year.”

WSU Public Relations Director Rachel Badali told the Standard-Examiner that there was a lot to celebrate on the Wildcats’ end.

“This week, we saw what it looks like to enthusiastically show up for our community,” she said. “So many people came together in support of the Blood Battle, from those who donated blood or platelets to those who gave their time volunteering. That’s what makes Wildcats and our neighbors so great, great, great.”

This year’s Blood Battle came during a year which the American Red Cross had to make a rare move. In July, the American Red Cross declared a national blood crisis for only the second time in its history.

“Blood donations have fallen to a four-year summer low,” a press release from the American Red Cross declared in July. “Although all blood types are needed, supplies of type O blood have dropped so sharply that the Red Cross is limiting distributions of O positive and O negative blood to hospitals. The supply of O positive blood is now below one day. When blood supplies fall this low, surgeries may be postponed and patients who need transfusions can face dangerous delays in care.”

The release noted the only other time a crisis had been declared was in Jan. 2022 as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic hit blood donations hard.

Smauldon said that major donation events like this are a huge step in rebuilding the national supply as well as keeping up with local demand.

“It’s super important, making sure that we can provide life-saving blood to those in need and so to see the community come out in force and want to make sure that their hospitals and their communities continue to have life-saving blood, it was amazing to see both universities, their students, and faculty and the community come together to want to make sure that that continues to happen,” he said. “And I will say that the students this year at both schools were remarkable. Each school has a Red Cross club at both schools, and both of those clubs did an amazing job at recruiting students and faculty and engaging with the community to ensure that we can provide life-saving blood to the community.”