By Adrien Quiros’25
On Friday October 5th, the 2024 Play for the Cure Game took place at the Frederick Gunn School. With all four grades competing in this game to raise money and awareness for breast cancer, the Seniors were crowned champions in an intense final game.
At the beginning of the week at all School Meetings, Megan Sladish ‘25 announced the annual Play for the Cure game. Play for the Cure is a field hockey match where all grades go against each other to see who is crowned the winner. The first matches of the event were half-field games where seniors went against the sophomores on one half of the field, and the freshmen went against juniors on the other side. The seniors and juniors won their games comfortably and went against each other in the final match! Using the whole field, both grades were in an intense game going back and forth, with the two grades missing big shots. In a defensive-focused match, the energy of the whole event was beautiful, with the whole school watching to see who would win. With around 3 minutes left in the match, William Jackson ‘25 scored a magnificent goal to put the seniors up 1-0 and help crown the Class of 2025 champions!
This game aims to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness, and the school funds money in many ways. Students had to pay $15 to play. In addition, there was a fantastic bake sale that raised a lot of money, and even students at The Frederick Gunn School could dress down for school if they paid $3. In addition to all the donors who contributed to the fundraiser, the Play for the Cure Game raised around $3200, blowing the estimated goal of $1500. This whole event is an outstanding way for Gunn to unite the whole community and raise recognition and money for Breast Cancer Awareness. Not only is Frederick Gunn doing extraordinary events for this great cause, but with technology advancing, innovative ideas are coming up to find a cure for cancer, and overall, cancer research is outstanding. The Nobel Prize winners were announced on October 9th, and two doctors named John Hopfield and Geoffrey Winton won the Nobel Prize in physics for “their pioneering work in artificial neural networks, which laid the foundation for modern AI applications in cancer research”(American Association for Cancer Research, 2024).
After the game, when asked how this Play for the Cure event was different this year for the seniors, Jackson stated, “This year was our last time playing as seniors, so it was great to get the win for the second year in a row. The Play for The Cure is one of the best and most fun times of the year when the whole community comes together to play, and it was great to help get the win and be champions once again”
