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Mountain Brook High students drive the local fight against cancer

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Photo by Image Arts.

Paul Roth picked one student out of the crowd at an assembly this year at Cherokee Bend Elementary School.

“What are you going to do to make a difference [in the battle against cancer]?” he asked sixth-grader Sam Rysedorph.

What the Mountain Brook High School student asked struck a chord with Sam. Within weeks, Sam raised $1,005 for the American Cancer Society. He and his friends, wearing backpack leaf blowers, walked around to neighbors and asked to clear leaves out of their yards in exchange for a donation to “blow out cancer.”

Sam’s team is one of 57 registered so far for this year’s Relay for Life event, scheduled for April 4 at Mountain Brook High School.

Last year student-led Relay for Life of Mountain Brook efforts raised $267,000 — surpassing a goal of $250,000. That put them as the No. 1 youth Relay for Life event per capita in the country and as No. 2 overall out of 150. The event has received multiple awards, including the Gordy Klatt Number One Youth Per Capita event and the Nationwide Top 5 Youth Income event.

But the heart of the event is not about money, but people — people like Patricia “Polly” Shoulders, who served as the registrar at MBHS for 37 years. She battled and defeated breast cancer twice but lost her third round with cancer in early 2013. People like Sean Fredella, whom the community rallied around with blue ribbons on mailboxes as he fought cancer in late 2011 and early 2012 as a Mountain Brook Elementary fifth-grader. People like former Interact Club sponsor and MBHS teacher Rodney Kornegay, who had Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a child. And people like Slade Anderson, a Crestline student who is now undergoing cancer treatment at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

“[Relay for Life] is a really big deal in this community because people in the community are affected by cancer,” event co-director and MBHS student Catherine Kinney said. “It’s so cool to see how the community comes together with even elementary school teams raising so much money.”

For co-director Ann Peyton Baker, Relay is an active way the community can try to keep the horrors of cancer from happening. Baker and Kinney are on this year’s student leadership team along with Mary Fran Wright, Katie Reiss and Roth.

The team leads Interact Club members on 14 different committees — 116 students in all this year — to put together Relay, starting shortly after the previous year’s event. In the weeks leading up the event, the leadership team spends about eight to 10 hours a week working on it before and after school and on weekends.

The leadership team holds assemblies at the elementary and junior high schools, where they show a special kickoff video they make each year and get the students excited about participating in Relay for Life.

“It’s cool to grow up with it and see how there is a huge age range of people with the same goal,” Kinney said, recalling how she first got involved in sixth grade because it sounded fun.

The following year, her great-uncle passed away from cancer. It prompted her initial interest in raising money, which she said is what Relay is all about.

Relay fundraising efforts span the entire school year at the high school. Soccer teams wear pink socks for a game. Buckets are passed around at football games, including the annual game against rival Vestavia Hills, where funds are split between the schools’ fundraising efforts. Ornaments are sold. Entry fees for the Powder Puff football game during Homecoming and Powder Buff volleyball tournament in the spring go to Relay. A team at the junior high worked with the administration to charge $5 for students to wear athletic shorts to school one day.

The April 4 event is primarily about celebrating the efforts that have taken place all year and all the survivors in the community, but that’s not to say the fundraising doesn’t continue. Male students dress up like females during the Mr. Relay Pageant and walk around with a purse to collect donations. The winner is whoever collects the most money — in part based on how well they respond to the pageant interview. Booths with festivities run the gamut from smashing fruit to inflatable sumo wrestling competitions. Attendees can purchase fried Oreos, cupcakes, ice-your-own donuts, pizza, “walking tacos” and pancakes — with all the funds going to the American Cancer Society.

The leadership team also encourages the wider community to attend the event, donate to the cause, start a team or purchase a luminaria (a lantern made of a bag and candle, lit after nightfall) in honor or memory of a loved one. Starting last year, they offered sky lanterns for $50 that will be released into the air that night in complete silence — a sight Kinney describes as “incredible.”

They said they would like to have more adults on teams, especially young adults who don’t have children in the school system.

“We want the whole community involved,” Kinney said.

For her, Relay isn’t just about the years of tradition behind the fundraising at the school. It’s about how each and every person in the community is affected by cancer.

Relay for Life of Mountain Brook

April 4, 4 p.m.-midnight • Mountain Brook High School

Relayforlife.org/mountainbrookal

How to support the event

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