On Friday, April 12th Bryant University had its tremendously successful Relay for Life. The “Rockin’ Relay,” with a theme centralized on music, brought together students, organizations, and sports teams for the American Cancer Society. It was a special night to honor those lost, celebrate survivors, and fight back. There were 43 teams, 500 participants and more than $42,000 raised! Hannah Cleef worked hard leading the planning as the Director of Relay so we sat down with her!
HCBryant: Tell us a little bit about all the planning that goes into Relay for Life of Bryant University!
HC: In the fall we interview people for our committees. We have 25 people that make up 8 committees. First we have to go through the selection process for that. We then pick our theme and begin having committee meetings every week in the spring, which is a lot of brainstorming and planning. We have a Relay Kick Off in the Roto to promote the event and team sign-ups. There are also meetings with team captains, but teams on their own come up with many great ideas on how they’ll fundraise.
One thing most people don’t know is the student organization that runs Relay for Life at Bryant is Colleges Against Cancer. It is our biggest event of the year, but this year, many more of their events were big as well! For Relay, we have an advisor, Kelly, from the American Cancer Society. She’s great, she comes to every meeting each week.
HCBryant: What did your role involve?
HC: Because there are eight committees, all the committees report back to me on what they’re doing and when things get done. It’s a lot of delegating and keeping everything running together, smoothly and on schedule! And of course, everyone comes to me with all the questions!
HCBryant: Why do you Relay?
HC: I relay for those who can’t.
HCBryant: What was the highlight, or your favorite part of the night?
HC: My highlight of the night was when we had the biggest rush of people all packed in the MAC, where it was unfortunately moved due to the weather. Even with the chaos, it was awesome to stand back and see the participation and everyone’s smiles. To see all of that was quite amazing and to be a part of that, and to know I had a big part of it, was indescribable. It was an out of body experience. People didn’t necessarily know all the behind the scenes work or my involvement, so getting to watch from that standpoint and see it all was really exciting. My favorite part was that it didn’t matter who your friends were, if you were alone or with an org or sports team, you got to come to Relay and come together, and none of that mattered. How the event defied the “cliques” was really special.
HCBryant: What is the most rewarding part of this event for you?
HC: Making a difference, especially having the survivors there to lead the walk was amazing. To know that the money that we’ve raised will allow other people to do that survivor lap is incredible.
HCBryant: Any other comments?
Thank you to everyone – the participants, the staff, my committee. I certainly didn’t do this single handedly! Congratulations to Bryant University as a whole for being amazing! Bryant Unviersity Relay for Life will continue collecting donations until August, donate here!