BENNINGTON, Vt. – Southern Vermont College Basketball is set to once again celebrate the American Cancer Society’s Suits And Sneakers Awareness Weekend while hosting Regis College on Saturday, January 24. In conjunction with SVC’s Colleges Against Cancer organization, coaches from both the men’s and women’s teams will lace up their sneakers with their game day suits in order to raise awareness and funding to fight cancer.
All game admissions proceeds will be directly donated to the ACS, and additional contributions will be accepted throughout the day at the Mountaineer Athletic Center. Tax deductible donations can also be made online with a credit card through the ACS secured website. The Southern Vermont CAC will be selling t-shirts at the door and hosting halftime contests with all funds collected going to the cause.
MAKE AN ONLINE, SECURED DONATION
The SVC women’s team is set to play Regis in a New England Collegiate Conference game at 1 p.m. with the men following against the Pride around 3 p.m.
Samantha Hastings, the College’s CAC President and a senior in Southern Vermont’s Radiologic Sciences program, commented that, "Colleges Against Cancer thinks this is a great opportunity to get athletics involved in the fight to end the disease. We believe that teaming up with the American Cancer Society is a great opportunity; at the end of the day, we all have the same goal, and that is to win the fight against cancer as a society.”
The Coaches vs. Cancer program empowers coaches, their teams, and communities to join the fight against cancer by participating in awareness efforts, advocacy programs, and fundraising activities to help people with cancer today and to find cures to end the disease tomorrow.
“The New England Division of the American Cancer Society is very excited to be working with Southern Vermont College once again during the 2015 Suits And Sneakers Weekend,” commented Brian Casalinova, a Community Events Specialist for the ACS and 1999 graduate of SVC. “Suits And Sneakers Weekend is so important because it really unites coaches, players, students, fans and survivors all over the country in the fight against cancer. One of our goals at the American Cancer Society is to educate and promote healthy living, and the Coaches Vs. Cancer program really engages students at the college and university level and challenges them to get involved.”
Guided by the Coaches vs. Cancer Council, participating coaches have helped raise more than $87 million to help the American Cancer Society save lives by helping people stay well and get well, by finding cures, and by fighting back against cancer. Annually, the ACS as a whole raises about $900 million; 79 percent of that money goes directly to ACS programs, services and life-saving research with 21 percent being administrative costs to fundraise. Last year, $36,534 was raised during Suits And Sneakers Weekend, and the ACS raised $430,000 in New England through Coaches Vs. Cancer games with colleges, universities and high schools.