For the past 20 years, the sport of lacrosse has been a HUGE part of my life. Although I personally grew up playing almost every other sport besides lacrosse, (we didn’t have lacrosse in North Carolina while I was growing up) I have always been a fan ever since I started working at UNC in the sports marketing department supporting the men’s and women’s lacrosse programs. While at UNC, I met my husband, Judd Lattimore in 2006 when he was an assistant lacrosse coach at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (he was an all-American lacrosse player in high school, and also a varsity lacrosse player at UNC). Throughout my career, I have worked with the lacrosse programs at UNC, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and College of the Holy Cross. After my time in collegiate athletics, I worked with the Boston Cannons Major League Lacrosse team. My husband who currently coaches at Boston University has coached lacrosse at the collegiate level for over 20 years, so you can see that we are a big lacrosse family.
Recently the president of the Mass Bay Youth Lacrosse League, Kevin Barney reached out to me to see if there was a way that we could partner. He worked for a non-profit years ago and wanted to find a way to get the 13,000 kids who played youth lacrosse in the 100 towns around Boston involved in charitable work as well.
So together we came up with LaCROSSe Out Cancer Challenge. The goal is to get kids to do 47 reps (pass to mom or dad, rebounder, wall ball) a day, for the week leading up to the start of our season (March 28 through April 3-opening day!). The 47 reps are in honor of the 47 kids in America who are diagnosed with cancer every day! Through our online platform, kids get donations to support them in this effort. Their goal is to raise a minimum of $47, and they will get prizes for hitting higher fundraising marks.
How can you help? Glad you asked! You can always feel free to donate to a player or town participating in this inaugural LaCROSSe Out Cancer challenge, however, we would love to spread this initiative across the country! If you know of a youth or high school sports program that would be interested in a custom fundraiser to spread awareness and raise funds for pediatric cancer research, please let me know! We can “Kick Out Cancer” with soccer, we can “Strike Out Cancer” with baseball or softball, we can “Tackle Cancer” with football—the options are endless! We can build a custom fundraising page for your town, school, or church team. So, let’s show kids across the country how they can help other kids beat cancer!
