THON

So a couple weekends ago, Joey and I went up to visit my sister at Penn State while she danced in the PSU Dance Marathon to raise money for pediatric cancer.  THON is something that has to be witnessed to be understood, but I did my best to try to explain it in an e-mail to a friend, which I have decided to post here!

 http://thon.org/

It was started in 1973 by some Penn State college students who wanted to raise money for kids with cancer.

Now, it’s a huge event where organizations from Penn State each select 4 dancers to represent them and dance for 46 hours straight on their feet. No sitting.  No sleeping.  No looking at the clock.  Just dancing, playing games, watching performances, motivational speakers, and meeting and hanging out with the families and the children they are supporting.

Things that you can 'sit down' for: piggybacks, "slip n slide" through baby powder, going to the bathroom, changing your shoes.  That's pretty much it...

So, you can imagine how elite of a group it is to be one of the 710 dancers chosen from the 15,000+ kids in the organizations. And both my brother and sister got to do it.

They raise money initially by going “canning” on a few select weekends in the fall.  Have you ever seen the kids in intersections with cans collecting money for kids with cancer? That’s the THON canners.  They go all over the US.  They collect change from drivers and host other events to collect donations.  The funds collected go to the “Four Diamonds Fund” which was started by a family who lost their child to cancer. The Four Diamonds Fund is located at Hershey Medical Center, and basically steps in when a family is diagnosed and covers whatever their insurance doesn’t. 

Lookin' good 34 hours in!

The event itself  is really well organized. They have committees of people there to keep the dancers busy and distracted from how tired they are. They have mail call, they feed them every few hours, they have a medical staff that keeps track of how often they take pain killers, etc. they each have a “moraler” which is someone assigned specifically to them to keep them positive.  There are guest performances, speakers, etc. and all the supporters stay in the stands the whole time with signs to cheer on their dancers.  There is a line dance done about every hour which is pretty fun.  The kids and families are also there for a lot of the time, and they get to hang out on the floor and there is even a “no adults allowed” room for them to just be kids.  There are 4  floor passes available for each organization at any given time, so we had to wait in a really long line with no guarantee that we’d get down to see her. I had to wait in the line twice but I finally got down there. We were there on Sunday between 2 and 4am.  Although you don’t tell the dancer what time it is, because that is just mean.

She walked over to where her sorority was located in the stands, and they went CRAZY cheering, yelling, waving signs. The amount of support is amazing.

There are so many people there, and NOBODY SITS DOWN.  There is a strict, unwritten rule about not sitting in the Bryce Jordan Center.  It is so awesome.  This year, the venue was so packed, the wait outside to get in on Sunday morning at 4:30am was 6-7 HOURS and they ended up closing it.  Consider also that it was about 5 degrees outside. My Mom waited for 2 hours to get in on Saturday.  Joey and I arrived around 9pm and couldn't get in, so we went to the hotel and came back at 1am... and still had to wait in line!

In the last 4 hours of THON, they have “family hour” which is when the families and the kids come out and speak about their experiences, they show a video of all the “angels” from that year, and it is terribly horribly sad.  I watched the live-feed at home as best as I could (with tens of thousands of alumni watching all around the globe, the site was very slow!)  And then, at the very end, they announce who raised the most money in each category.  Laura’s sorority and their partner raised over $131,000… and they came in 9^th place for greek life.  The winners for greek life raised over 350K.

The last thing they do is show the total amount raised for that year.  To put it in perspective, when my brother, Alex, danced in 2008 they raised a record breaking 6+ MILLION dollars.

This year, they raised over 12 million dollars, bringing the total amount raised for the fund to over 100 million.  It is so incredible.  This is the moment of the reveal, which occurs just minutes after the dancers sit down for the first time in two days. Make sure your volume is up. It gives me chills.

THON is really difficult to explain without experiencing it.  Please check out THON.ORG if you have any questions!!!

I'm sure when my Mom and Laura read this they will have things to add- so please go ahead and do so in the comments.

MAJOR CONGRATULATIONS to all of the dancers and especially Laura for completing 46 For the Kids!

~SG