One in eight women in the United States will be afflicted with breast cancer at some point in her lifetime. More than 16,000 of these women will be treated at Upstate University Hospital’s cancer center in Syracuse. In order support Cen-tral New York breast cancer patients and help fund cancer research, Col-gate’s Breast Cancer Awareness Co-alition teamed up with the Sorella Society, Sigma Chi and Kappa Kap-pa Gamma to host the second an-nual flag football tournament. Held on Friday, October 19, the tourna-ment was a success largely due to the efforts and cooperation of the student organizations involved. “While each of these groups dif-fer in mission and reach, the collab-oration makes for a powerful, suc-cessful fundraising event for a great cause,” Sorella Society President senior Stephanie Manning said. This collaboration reflected the values of many cancer awareness and treatment centers, including Upstate University Hospital. “There is real value in being able to turn to a network of enthusiastic and engaging organizations when putting on an event. The Colgate network that we can take advantage of is exactly what the Upstate Can-cer Institute is working to establish,” Sigma Chi Philanthropy Chair senior Gray Huffard said. Although there are many can-cer institutes across the country, Upstate is the only cancer research center in all of Central New York, established recently in 2009. “While there are many founda-tions available, it is important to us that we help further research and awareness initiatives in the Central New York region,” Huffard said. Many student groups on campus work to support Central New York, so for the four organizations involved with the flag football tournament, it was im-portant to help Upstate become a cancer treatment and research powerhouse. The hospital balances adminis-tering over 800 chemotherapy treatments per month while con-struting a new state of the art cancer center. At the same time, it is improving its 3 year-old re-search center. While Upstate is part of the public State Univer-sity of New York system, it re-ceives less than eight percent of its income from New York State’s shrinking budget. “[Breast cancer] is an issue that affects so many people in so many ways whether it be you, your mother, your friend, your aunt, your grandmother or your sister, breast cancer’s prevalence is so widespread,” Manning said. It will take a while for the or-ganizers of the flag football tour-nament to total up all of the mon-ey raised due to all of the ‘Gate Card donations. In addition to supporting cancer research, the event proved that Colgate stu-dents are committed to assisting their neighbors in Central New York. All of the groups involved look forward to collaborating with each other again in the fu-ture, perhaps for a third annual flag football tournament.

Contact Jared Goldsmith at

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