Everyone who has seen the movie “Miracle” or watched a clip of the final seconds of America’s victory over the Soviet Union in 1980 knows the famous words of Al Michaels - words that evoke an incredibly powerful reaction, sending chills up and down one’s body as you hear the sheer excitement and passion in his voice. Those who watched it live will probably never forget the emotions running through their head as he exuberantly yelled into the mic:
“DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES – YES!”
I can certainly say that the words of overall chairperson and bioengineering student Elaine Tanella as she shouted the THON 2012 total will have a similar effect on me:
“TEN MILLION – “
I didn’t even hear the rest, because as soon as I saw the zero and the one I started jumping around with the rest of the Bryce Jordan Center and screaming at the top of my lungs. I screamed for probably solid 60 seconds, and then I stopped and took a moment to appreciate the incredible number in front of me.
$10,686,924.83. Wow.
As the communications chair for Springfield, a special interest organization benefiting THON, I spent all year helping lead our group’s fundraising efforts through canning, raffles, and solicitations. We are one of the hundreds of organizations that raise money all year long and send dancers to the floor for the 46-hour marathon in February. But looking around the BJC shows you that for this weekend, all of the organizations come together and make a stand – literally - in the fight against pediatric cancer.
It is a weekend where a bunch of college students get to act like kids again. It is a weekend full of tears of sadness and tears of joy. It teaches lessons that you can’t pick up in your thermo book or from your physics professor. It is breathtaking, surreal, unbelievable, and every other word you use to describe something when you can’t find the right word, but one thing is for sure.
It is Penn State.
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