For the second year in a row, swimmers from the North Shore Summer Swim League and surrounding area pool and beach clubs will be wearing gold swim caps to benefit the Make Some Noise: Cure Kids Cancer Foundation through the foundation’s “Swimmers Go Gold for Childhood Cancer” campaign. 

The Make Some Noise Foundation’s “Swimmers Go Gold” campaign raises awareness and research funding for childhood cancers. 

The pediatric cancer research foundation was started by a child with cancer. Why Gold? Gold is the awareness color for childhood cancer. 

On July 24, area swim teams will be creating a “pool of gold” during their swim meets — dedicating the night of races to helping to raise awareness and critically needed research funding for childhood cancers.

Participants for July 24 North Shore Swimmers Go Gold Meets:

This year the summer swim leagues have picked one date, July 24, to host Go Gold swim meets. In an effort to raise both awareness and critically needed research funds, they will be selling newly designed 2012 Gold swim caps and shirts.

Teams participating are: Chapel, Pavilion Beach Club, Monmouth Beach Bath & Tennis, Promenade, Sands, Sea Bright Bath & Tennis, Seashore Day Camp and School, Ship Ahoy, Surfrider, Water's Edge, Rumson Country Club and Oceanport Lions.

The Make Some Noise Foundation is extremely grateful to the swim teams, their coaches, families, and supporters for their heroic efforts to help make some noise about childhood cancer. If your team wishes to join the campaign, contact Gerri Daneman, gerri@makenoise4kids.org for more information.

Please visit our website http://www.makenoise4kids.org for more information about the foundation and childhood cancers.

Background behind Swimmers Go Gold:

In May of 2009, Lilly Daneman, of Little Silver, was diagnosed with a pediatric bone cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma. She was nine years old.

Lilly attended Seashore Day Camp and School and was a member of the Monmouth Barracuda Swim Team. For treatment, she spent over 100 days in the hospital, received 14 rounds of chemotherapy and limb salvage surgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to replace her femur with a titanium rod.

In January 2011, 10-year-old Rachel Kovach, an Atlantic Highlands resident and member of the Monmouth Barracuda swim team was diagnosed with the same exact pediatric bone cancer.

Lilly’s mother, Gerri Daneman, a foundation trustee, with the help of Monmouth Barracuda Coach Paul Buerck and Robin Levin of Seashore Daycamp and School, rallied the local swim clubs to purchase gold swim caps creating a pool of gold in the summer of 2011.

Lilly, who now celebrates her two and a half-year remission, is an active young lady despite her titanium femur. This helped to inspire Rachel as she ended her chemotherapy to take Lilly’s summer swimming to a higher level by recently completing her first ocean mile race in Avon on July 8.

Rachel is 12 years old and swims long course at Deal Pavilion with her beloved Monmouth Barracuda swim team.

During Lilly’s surgery, back in August 2009 at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, she met 11-year-old Malcolm Sutherland-Foggio, of Morris County, who had the same kind of pediatric cancer.

He wanted to form a foundation to make some noise about children’s cancer and raise research funding on a national level. Lilly and Malcolm quickly became friends.

Malcolm incorporated Make Some Noise in September 2009. At that point, Lilly’s mother Gerri joined the Board of Trustees to help the foundation raise funds for pediatric cancer research.

In September 2010, with the help of the McLoone family, whose son Jack also had pediatric cancer, Make Some Noise hosted “Rockin’ the Boardwalk” and a sand castle building contest at McLoone’s Pier House in Pier Village.

The dinner auction was dedicated to the memory of Mark Levin, age 9, who had recently passed from childhood cancer, and honored nearly a dozen Monmouth County childhood cancer warriors.

In January of 2011, another young swimmer from the Monmouth Barracudas, Rachel Kovach, was also diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma. Rachel’s coach, Paul Buerck, was devastated to learn the news. Coach Paul has had two swimmers diagnosed with pediatric cancer and is also the teacher of three other young Monmouth County children currently battling relapsed leukemia.

Pediatric cancer affects one in every 320 children. Coach Paul and the Monmouth Barracudas hosted “Race for Rachel” in February, 2011; and Rachel and her family designated Make Some Noise as the beneficiary of the very successful event. But knowing how great the research funding needs are, Coach Paul felt he needed to do more to make some noise about childhood cancer.

Last summer, Coach Paul Buerck and the Monmouth Barracuda Swim team, along with Coach Robin Levin from Seashore Day Camp, rallied the North Swim League and other surrounding area swim teams to Make Some Noise to help cure kids’ cancer.

Swim teams were asked to “Go Gold,” have their swimmers purchase gold Make Some Noise swim caps for $10 and wear them at one of their home meets. The Swimmers Go Gold meets raised over $17,000 dollars for funding for critically needed research.

Swimmers Go Gold, founded at the Jersey Shore, continued throughout the state of New Jersey during the 2011-12 swim season, bringing in a total of more than $30,000. 

Coach Paul from the Monmouth Barracuda Swim Team and Coach Bill Deatly from Scarlet Elite Swim Aquatics now have NJSIAA long and short course swim meets where portions of their proceeds will be donated to the Make Some Noise foundation and their efforts to fund the cure research.

In September of 2011, the Mcloone’s hosted Rockin’ on the River and guest speaker Olympic Champion Rowdy Gaines, was so moved by the childhood cancer warriors he met that evening and swam with during a clinic hosted by the Monmouth Barracudas, that he joined the foundation as a member of its board of trustees.

Additional Upcoming Events:

The Foundation is currently planning a dinner/auction fundraiser and Golf outing at Gibbs Hall and Sun Eagles Golf course on Friday, Sept. 28.

The foundation also has plans in the works, with the help of a local children’s hospital, to "Paint the Towns Gold" for Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month in September.

Contact Event Co-Chairs Beth McLoone and Gerri Grena-Daneman for more information, tickets, and donations to the auction: events@makenoise4kids.org

About Childhood Cancer:

A child’s odds of being diagnosed are one in 320 — three times their likelihood of being admitted into an Ivy League college.

Many treatments for childhood cancers are 30 years old, and cure research is slowed compared to adult cancer research due to lack of funding.

Childhood cancer as a whole receives only 3 percent of the research funding pie, and that 3 percent needs to be divided among more than a dozen different pediatric cancers.

Image how underfunded that makes any one of these childhood cancers. Some cancers, like acute myeloid leukemia and most of the solid tumors, like brain and bone cancers still have poor survival rates.

Seventy-five percent of those who survive childhood cancers face serious long term health consequences from the treatments they received as growing children. Chemotherapy and radiation are extremely harsh on developing organs. 

About the Foundation:

The Make Some Noise: Cure Kids Cancer Foundation was founded by a NJ child with cancer. It is headquartered in Morris County and occupies office space with Mack-Cali Corporation’s generous subsidies.

The foundation raises critically needed research funds for all childhood cancers and distributes them to pediatric cancer research facilities across the country … choosing cancer specific research to fund to be sure the money is well directed. Their mission is to make some noise on a national level as quickly as possible to help speed up the research funding.

In the more than two years since its incorporation, Make Some Noise has incorporated Chapters in other states, has raised nearly a million dollars, was recognized as a top 3 finalist for “Best New Charity” in the 2011 Classy Awards in San Diego, and Founder, Malcolm, was honored as a “NJ Hero” by First Lady, Mary Pat Christie in January 2012. 

But Make Some Noise is just getting started. We lose as many children to cancer each year as the number of people we lost on 911. If cures remain another 10 years off, we will lose another 20-30,000 children to cancer in this country alone, and one million world-wide.

Contacts:

Gerri Daneman, VP gerri@makenoise4kids.org   732-881-1971

Julie Sutherland, Chairman julie@makenoise4kids.org  Foundation office: 973-656-1111