I remember the first time I heard of THON.
It was my senior year of high school. My nutrition teacher went to Penn State and sometimes she would talk to us as in class about her college experiences. My teacher had told all of us that if we decided to go to Penn State we should attend the annual 46-hour dance marathon called THON.
For those of you who don’t know what THON is, THON is an event that is hosted every year by Penn State at State College at the Bryce Jordan Center. It’s a student-run philanthropy that gets involved in the lives of Four Diamonds children and their families, who are affected by cancer. THON’s purpose as an organization is to be able to give emotional and financial support to the kid’s families that are impacted by cancer, spread awareness, and raise money towards research for a cure.
In early February, I heard that Behrend Benefitting THON would be taking a bus trip down to THON. I had always dreamed of going since my senior year of high school. I asked a friend of mine if she would do it with me and she said yes. We both didn’t know what we would be getting ourselves into but, we were ready to take on this experience.
When we left Behrend Friday morning, I was excited and pumped to begin this adventure. I couldn’t even sleep on the way down to State College. I was ready to be a part of an experience I had only had heard about but, was about to experience for the first time myself!
We finally arrived in State College around 11:30 A.M… It was time to drop our stuff off at the hotel and get some lunch. As we were waiting to drop our stuff in the hotel room, my friend and I decided that we wanted to join a group. Neither of us are club members of Behrend Benefitting THON but, still wanted to be able to take part in this amazing experience. When you sign up for a group, each group is assigned a certain shift and each group dances for the same amount of hours, just at different times. Sometimes the shifts would overlap and we would dance with another group and sometimes it just would be us dancing by ourselves. When my friend and I found out that we would be dancing for 12 hours, we were pretty shocked. I didn’t know if I would be able to even stay up for that long. I’ve never worked for 12 hours but, I’ve done 8-hour shifts so I didn’t know how I would be able to pull this off. In order to do this, I knew I would need to caffeinate myself to stay awake, which, I did quite a few times that weekend.
Once my group and I were done eating lunch, we headed straight to our hotel to get some sleep. Our first shift started at 8:30pm. We needed to get some sleep so we could be ready to dance our hearts out. After a much-needed nap, we woke up, ate some pizza, got all our stuff ready, and headed to the BJC to get the party started. Every year, THON invites a special musical guest, and this year they invited Andy Grammer to come and perform. Most of you probably know him best for his song, “Honey, I’m Good.” He performed Friday night to kick off THON and sang for about an hour and a half to get the crowd ready. Mason Ramsey, the little boy that became an online hit when he yodelled at a Walmart, also sang at THON. He performed some country hits. Throughout, the entire weekend THON brings local acts, DJs and other performers to entertain the crowd and get everyone dancing.
There are a couple of different events that take place during the weekend. There’s the kid’s fashion/talent show and a pep rally. During the kid’s fashion show, kids from the Four Diamonds are given an opportunity to be able to showcase their talent or be able to walk the runway and show off their fashionable outfits. It was great to be able to see these kids personalities come to life and see them doing something that they enjoyed doing.
The pep rally gets everyone’s Penn State school spirit up. If you have never been to a football game at Penn State, this event comes pretty close to it. To get everyone started off, the “Let’s go PSU (Hey Song)” gets the crowd wild and energized. Of course, Penn State traditional songs like, the Alma Mater song and “Fight on, State” were played. The song that got all of us singing in the crowd going was PSU favorite, “Sweet Caroline.” Everyone turned on their lights on their phones and swayed to the music. Each year, Penn State also hosts a dance battle for all of their sports teams. This year the finalists were the men’s gymnastics team and the football team, with the former ending up winning this year.
The final four hours of THON are what everyone looks forward to the most, which are easily some of the toughest four hours. During these final hours, there is family hour, in which, every Four Diamonds family is recognized on stage. Families are also chosen to speak on behalf of their deceased or surviving child. Each family is given the opportunity to speak about how childhood cancer changed their lives forever. In the final four hours, a slide show was presented of all the Four Diamonds kids who, have died from childhood cancer. It was hard not to cry when videos of some of the children were shown. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. It was sad to see, that their bright and charismatic personalities were taken away from their families way too soon. During the final four hours, the amount of money raised by THON is revealed. This year THON raised $10,621,683.76
At every hour during THON weekend, we performed a line dance that is choreographed and performed by the dancer relation captains at Penn State. The line dance is created every year and is based off of current events that have happened in that year. It engages the audience to sing and dance along. The dancer relation captains would go to the stage every hour to perform and show us the dance. We did this every hour to show our support to the children that are currently and have been affected by childhood cancer.
By the end of the weekend, I was starting to already memorize the lyrics to the chant that they made up for that weekend. It was very catchy and upbeat. I looked forward to doing this dance every hour, along with the other students in the stands. Until you go to an event like THON you have not experienced what it is like to be energized by a crowd. It was truly amazing and inspiring to see the 16,000 people in the BJC that were willing to get up and dance for a cure for childhood cancer.
I learned so much from my weekend at THON. One of the lessons I learned was that you can’t take things for granted especially, your health. Every day we wake up and don’t even begin to realize that our good health could be taken away from us, in an instant. These children were healthy one day, and the next day they were in a hospital being told by a doctor that they had cancer. I can’t even imagine what these families have gone through but, I will tell you that because they went through this life-changing experience in their lives, they became stronger because of it.
Until a cure for childhood cancer is found, we will continue to dance in honor of those who are currently battling, survived, and passed away from childhood cancer. We dance for the kids. If you ever get the opportunity to attend THON, I suggest you go. It will be a memorable experience with your friends that you will never forget. The hours of no sleep and not being able to sit are totally worth it because YOU decided to take a stand and show your support for childhood cancer. YOU made a difference in the lives of children with cancer. As the line dance chant said it best, “FTK is how Penn State roars!”
Images courtesy of the writer, Google Images and THON