The John Marshall High School swim team will host “Go Gold Night” today in collaboration with the Marshall County Childhood Cancer Awareness Group in honor of former team member Hannah Woods, who lost her life to cancer this year.

A gift card tree with more than $500 in gift cards will be raffled off, and donations will be accepted during tonight’s swim meet for the event. The meet against Martins Ferry High School will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Four Seasons Pool and Fitness Center in Moundsville.

Proceeds from the gift card tree and donations will go to the awareness group, which funds childhood cancer research. Brenda Crow, co-founder and co-chair, said the swim meet will include a lemonade stand.

The group is a charity partner with the U.S. Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. Crow said they work with the ASLF to research and determine what grants they want to contribute to.

According to the ALSF, more than 400,000 children develop cancer worldwide each year. Childhood cancer is also the number one cause of death by disease in children in the U.S.

The Marshall County group recently donated $40,000 toward a three-year research project targeting treatment for Ewing Sarcoma, which is the bone cancer that took the life of Hannah Woods this year and JMHS student Cohen Pyles in 2023. Crow noted that childhood cancer research is “vastly underfunded.”

“Childhood cancer research gets less than 5% of the budget from the American Cancer Society and less than 4% of the budget from the government, which is the National Cancer Insitute,” Crow said. “We’re always fundraising because childhood cancers differ from adult cancers and require specific researchers.”

Crow and co-chair Brenda Frohnapfel founded the awareness group in 2016 after Frohnapfel’s daughter, Abby Frohnapfel, passed away after a 57-day battle with leukemia. Since its first donation in 2017, the group has donated $219,000 directly to research.

“You don’t realize how underfunded it is [childhood cancer research,]” Crow said. “That’s why people have lemonade stands or shave their heads to raise money for it.”

Crow noted the group has also donated nearly $30,000 to local families on an “as needed” basis. She said these donations have helped provide gas or food money for families traveling to Morgantown or Pittsburgh for cancer treatment. She noted the group has even helped cover funeral expenses for local children with cancer who passed away.

“Our main goal is to raise money for research and awareness,” Crow said. “We need more research. You can buy all the toys and art supplies you want to send to the hospital for these kids to entertain themselves, but the research is where the money is really needed.”