From Washington University Athletics
The Washington University in St. Louis swimming & diving program is joining thousands of athletes from collegiate, high school and club teams across the country to participate in the 14th Annual Ted Mullin "Leave it in the Pool" Hour of Power Relay for Sarcoma Research Tuesday, Nov. 12, which is sponsored by Carleton College swimming & diving teams.
The Hour of Power event honors those who are fighting or have succumbed to cancer, including former Carleton swimmer Edward H. "Ted" Mullin, who passed away from synovial sarcoma, a rare soft-tissue cancer, in September 2006. The annual swim relay has grown from 15 teams in its first year to over 160 teams and more than 8,500 athletes in recent years. Participating swim teams engage in continuous relays of any stroke for a full hour of all-out swimming.
The 60-minute relay aims to generate awareness of sarcoma, a rare cancer that disproportionately affects adolescents and young adults. Over the past 13 years, participants in the "Hour of Power" raised more than $800,000 for the Ted Mullin Fund for Pediatric Sarcoma Research at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital.
The funds have been used for a variety of projects that evaluate the genetic basis of sarcomas, the identification of novel markers of disease diagnosis or progression, and the development of new small molecule and cell therapies for resistant disease. Each summer, the University also hosts Ted Mullin Fund scholars, offering four Hour of Power collegiate participants an opportunity to advance their interest in science and cancer biology by spending 10 weeks in a laboratory under the mentorship of a pediatric cancer researcher within the Section of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of Chicago Medicine.