On the evening of May 14, Mini-THON members and other paying participants joined in the gym to celebrate the money raised towards fighting childhood cancer this year. 

This fundraiser allows students to have a good time, for a good cause.

Mini-THON is an event modeled after Penn State’s THON. Students raise funds and pay to attend the event to play games and eat food with their friends.

Our Mini-THON was originally supposed to be held outside on the turf, but this plan was rained out. So, instead the event occurred in the gymnasium and the cafeteria. 

During the five hours that this event lasted, students weren’t allowed to sit down. This is how THON is run, except their event lasts for 46 hours. 

There was a speaker named Ashley at the beginning of the event who had experienced first-hand how childhood cancer affects families. Her son, Nick, had gone through cancer treatment, and she shared her story to the Mini-THON participants. 

A few games that could be found at Mini-THON were: cornhole, kanjam, gaga ball, and spike ball. Along with these, games of both Banana Ball and dodgeball were played.

“The games seemed really fun, I wish I was able to attend,” said sophomore Amanda Merrick. 

Between each hour, junior Chloe Davis led a choreographed dance. Davis added on a new segment to the dance each time. 

Towards the end of the event, sponsors hosted an eating competition. During this event, groups of five were to each eat an uncommon food combination or generally weird food item, run to the end of the gym and back, and get back in line for the next team member to go. 

The items that were being eaten were saltines (with no water), baby food, bananas dipped in ketchup, pudding eaten with chopsticks, and cereal soaked in V8 juice. 

Another competition at Mini-THON was the ‘3-legged race’ challenge. In this race, students got with a partner, one of each student’s legs were tied to the others, and whichever pair made it to and from the opposite end of the gym first won. 

The Mini-THON committee closed the evening by announcing how much money Mini-THON had fundraised in total for this year. The final total was over seven thousand dollars.