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MHS club event raises $3K to fight cancer
Dan Eakin/Staff Photo - Garrett Christianson shaves Jesse Cox's head while Stephanie Colmenero shaves Marcell Eldin's head during the NSCC's Relay for Life event Monday afternoon in the McKinney High School gymnasium. Twenty-eight students had their head shaved during the rally, which raised more than $3,000 for cancer research.
By Dan Eakin, deakin@starlocalnews.com
The Neglected Sports Cheer Club (NSCC) was founded a couple of years ago to cheer athletes in sports (such as those in cross country, wrestling or swimming) who receive less cheering than those in sports like football and basketball.
But the McKinney High School club had even more to cheer about Monday afternoon when more than 500 students packed into the school gymnasium for an NSCC-sponsored Relay for Life event to raise funds to fight cancer.
Each of the students paid $3 to attend the event that included entertainment by the Marquettes dance team and the McKinney High drum line, and a speech by a man who knows firsthand what it's like to fight cancer.
Tate Mulligan, a McKinney High junior who founded the NSCC as a freshman, said the event raised $3,260 for the American Cancer Society, a fitting testament to the large turnout.
"I was in awe that more than 500 kids came to support this event," she said.
Dallas businessman and keynote speaker Hugh Fagan told the students, teachers and other school staff members that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia.
"Today marks the third anniversary of that dreaded phone call from my doctor that would forever change my life," Fagan told the crowd.
Fagan was 38 years old when he got the news. He said he had first gone to a doctor after feeling constantly tired and having a persistent cough that kept him up at night.
During the next several months, he would take test after test and go through treatment after treatment at several different hospitals and clinics.
"Initial chemotherapy for leukemia is infused in the body for seven consecutive days, 24 hours a day, and it is brutal," he said. "And this is just round one. As the different tests came back during the first week, the news kept getting worse and worse. I had a very aggressive subtype with very little precedence in how to treat it and it wasn't responding well to the chemo."
"Those next two years were really rough," he said. "I had life-threatening brain infections, lung infections, all kinds of infections, graft versus host disease complications, confinement to a wheelchair, many trips to the ER in the middle of the night and even twice placed on life support."
He continued, "Each time, I would awaken to a room full of onlookers who looked like they had just seen a ghost. I had no idea what was going on or even how bad of shape I had been in. I once woke up having missed Christmas and was so angry that I had missed it."
Fagan said the doctors would look at him in astonishment, gently nodding their heads and saying to themselves, "We have no idea why this guy is still alive."
Fagan said he is now in remission, but "it's only been in the last six months or so that I've had any resemblance of a normal life."
In spite of the problems, Fagan said his experiences with leukemia had a positive influence on his life.
"From a mental, emotional and spiritual perspective, I am stronger now than I was before cancer," he said. "I'm more grateful, more loving, more patient, more compassionate and more resilient. I'm more empowered. And I'm alive."
Fagan, who said he and his wife will donate $1,000 to fight cancer, was given a standing ovation by the crowd when he finished his speech and before the kids and their shearers came forward for the public head shaving.
About 40 NSCC members wore shirts that read on front, "MHS NSCC R4L (Relay for Life)." The back of the shirts reads "LIV ON 2012."
Tate said, "It's kind of been our slogan since Madison Jones' sister, Olivia, died of cancer about a year ago. Olivia often said, 'Live on.'"
Madison is a McKinney High student and a NSCC member.
The NSCC is not yet finished raising funds to fight cancer. On April 27, the club and several other groups will gather at The Ballfields at Craig Ranch for an all-night fundraising event.
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