Lift for Life had a nice, local flavor this year
Print
Share
Email to a friend
Add This
Feeds
Local Sports
Article RatingScott Shirley could have never anticipated this type of outpouring.
It was six years ago, Shirley, then a Penn State football player, was sitting at his kitchen table with friends and teammates Dave Costlow and Damone Jones.
They decided it was time to make a difference.
From that point, until now, Shirley has established himself as a difference maker with his organization Uplifting Athletes, which puts on the annual event Lift for Life.
Friday’s event was the sixth installment of the weight lifting based competition that pits Nittany Lions players split into teams of four, competing to raise money for kidney cancer, a rare disease that affects less than 200,000 Americans each year.
One of the people affected by the rare form of cancer was Shirley’s father, longtime Mechanicsburg baseball coach Don Shirley, who passed away in October of 2005 after winning 471 games as head coach.
Some $300,000 later, Scott Shirley’s quest is not nearly complete.
Instead Shirley keeps pushing on, keeps trying to find ways to help people affected by rare disease. So much so he recently left his engineering job in Washington D.C. to head up Uplifting Athletes full time. The non-profit is run out of Harrisburg.
Between 2007-08, Uplifting Athletes has raised $75,000. Their fiscal year ends in September.
Shirley’s program has reached further across the country too. At Friday’s event a family from Oregon was able to attend the event and gather information.
“It’s actually an organization run by the current football players,” Shirley said. “They’re the ones responsible for putting this together. Really the idea behind it is something to attract fans and media to help raise awareness for kidney cancer, a rare disease.
“And I think that the way the crowd has grown over the years, this is the sixth year now, it just gets bigger and bigger and it’s just a great opportunity to raise awareness for kidney cancer as a rare disease.”
The player in charge of coordinating the event this year was wide receiver Brett Brackett.
The event has gotten so big that Mechanicsburg has raised over $10,000 since they started hosting a similar event. Later this year Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., will hold an event and become a chapter in the organization.
“That’s what it’s all about,” Shirley said. “College football players are in a position to make a difference and people pay attention to what they do, right or wrong, for better or worse and this is a perfect example of guys taking advantage of that situation. Really, it’s just inspiring people, mobilizing people to take action and I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing.”
“It’s kind of funny because people ask me if its therapeutic, and I don’t often think of it as that way, it’s always been about a much bigger purpose and much bigger cause and that’s where the focus is and whenever my dad was diagnosed we knew we weren’t going to be able to do anything to help him directly but it made us aware of a situation and a need we could address.”
That first year, Shirley, Costlow and Jones put up fliers around the Penn State campus directing anyone interested to the team weight room. The event has grown into a phenomenon of it’s own. Fans, parents and kids alike now pile into Holuba Hall and watch their favorite Nittany Lions participate in 11 different exercises.
There’s autograph sessions for fans as well.
“The first year it was just something that Dave Costlow and Damone Jones and I just sat around a table and said ‘what can we do?’ Shirley said at Friday’s competition. “We learned about this situation where kidney cancer is not a popular disease, it affects fewer than 200,000 Americans. So that first year it was just sitting around our kitchen table one night saying ‘let’s hang some posters around campus, let’s have some people come to the weight room and check this thing out.’
“After that we realized the benefits were much greater and the potential was considerably more. At the same time we really wanted to grow it and leave it in the hands of the current football players so they could get the same experience out of it that we did.”
When Don Shirley was diagnosed with the disease there was only one FDA approved option for treatment. Since Shirley has devoted the time to raising more money and awareness four new treatments have hit the market.
“The surge in research and funding for kidney cancer is just continuing to grow,” Shirley said.
“This is people doing something. There’s no question something special is happening.”
DEMAND FOR PSU
TICKETS SOAR
For the second straight season Penn State home games are nearly sold out.
According to spokesman Jeff Nelson, 93,500 season tickets have been accounted for and the demand has already created sellouts for home games against Oregon State, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Michigan State.
A limited number of tickets remain for the season opener against Coastal Carolina on August 30th and the Sept. 20th game against Temple.
Tickets for the contest on Sept. 6th with Oregon State are selling for as much as $530 on the popular website StubHub.com. Tickets for the Oct. 18th game against rival Michigan can be found on the same website for a price of $2,500.
