On Saturday, Kent State hosted its annual Relay For Life. Seniors and co-presidents of KSU’s Relay For Life, Abigail Lilli, marketing major, and Danielle Brugh, early childhood education major, planned and coordinated this year’s event along with their team.
“I think Relay started off as a 24-hour event where you raise money for cancer all night because they say cancer never sleeps,” Lilli said when describing what the event symbolizes.
Starting in May of 1985, Relay began with Dr. Gordon “Gordy” Klatt walking and running for 24 hours around a track in Tacoma, Washington, raising money to help the American Cancer Society.
At Kent State’s Relay, students, alumni and Kent residents worked to accomplish the same thing. Starting at 11 a.m. and ending 12 hours later, teams and individuals fundraised, walked, ran and joined in group activities all in support of helping to fulfill the American Cancer Society’s mission to free the world of cancer.
At the eleventh hour mark, Lilli and Brugh took to the relay stage in the Kent State Fieldhouse to announce the final amount raised and give out awards.
“Thank you to the survivors for allowing us to honor you tonight and thank you to our committee for helping us put on this event and making it so successful, it has been a great 12 hours with you all. Tonight we have raised a total of $30,000.” Lilli said on stage.
After announcing their total raised for the night, Brugh took the mic to give out awards to the ten endurance walkers who walked the entire 12 hours, the most spirited team, the Spirit of Relay, best team campsite, top individual fundraisers and top team fundraisers.
“For top team fundraising we have in third place Kent State Ambassadors, in second place we have Phi Sigma Pi, and a drumroll for the first place team fundraiser, Chi Omega,” Brugh announced.
Brugh also announced the top individual fundraisers, “In third place, we have Sarah Hales [with a total $500 raised], In second place we have Melissa Guthrie [$520] and then in first place for individual fundraising, we have Olivia Barnett [$1,000]. (All numbers coming for The Relay for Life KSU website.)
“I’ve had a lot of family members who have had cancer unfortunately, my grandma was the first one and she passed about ten years ago so that was like my main motivation and then both my mom and my father had cancer. My mom was super recent like just the end of this past year, so it really put me into work mode,” said Olivia Barnett, a senior integrated science major who was the top individual fundraiser this year.
Although this might not have been the highest amount that they have raised, as back in 2016 they raised over $50,000, the message of the Relay is that every dollar counts when fighting the monster that is cancer. All the money raised goes to the American Cancer Society to help with funding and conducting research, sharing expert information, supporting patients and spreading the word about prevention.
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