BOSTON, Mass. - The Simmons College women's swimming & diving team joined thousands of student-athletes from collegiate, high school, and club teams across the nation and abroad to celebrate the 12th Annual Ted Mullin "Leave it in the Pool" Hour of Power Relay for Sarcoma Research, sponsored by Carleton College swimming and diving teams.
The Sharks gave support to the cause for the 10th straight year to join an estimated 7,750 other student-athletes throughout the nation.
The Hour of Power event honors those who are fighting or have succumbed to cancer, including former Carleton swimmer Edward H. "Ted" Mullin, who passed away from synovial sarcoma, a rare soft-tissue cancer, in September 2006. The annual swim relay has grown from 15 teams in its first year to over 160 teams and just under 8,000 athletes in recent years and has raised nearly $700,000 to support research at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital.
Participating swim teams engage in continuous relays of any stroke for a full hour of all-out swimming with the objective of keeping all relays in each lane on the same length. Simultaneously swimming the "Hour of Power" across time zones adds to the spirit and fun of the relay, but teams unable to participate at the scheduled date/times are encouraged to hold a relay event whenever possible.
The Ted Mullin Fund has supported research into novel chemotherapy/biology agents for sarcomas, new ways to administer chemotherapy in this disease, techniques to visualize more accurately the tumor response in the patient, novel genomics strategies to identify high-risk sarcoma patients, molecular techniques to personalize therapy to maximize benefit while reducing treatment-related toxicity, and treatments for metastatic or resistant disease that use the patient's own immune system to attack residual tumors. Each summer, the UCM hosts Ted Mullin Fund Scholars in pediatric cancer laboratories, giving collegiate Ted Mullin "Hour of Power" participants an opportunity to advance their interest in science and cancer biology. With intial seed mony from the Ted Mullin Fund, UCM is celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program. Future plans include, in collaboration with other national programs, the establishment of a consortium to facilitate more rapid development and availability of new molecular and biologic therapeutics.
Donors should make checks payable to "FJC/ Ted Mullin Fund" with the team name in the memo line, and mailed to the Ted Mullin Fund, P.O. Box 437, Winnetka, Illinois 60093-0437. All donations made to the Ted Mullin Fund at FJC are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by United States law.