Tech’s annual Relay for Life kicks off tonight at 6 p.m. with a theme honoring the unlucky day.
“Superstitions is the overall theme,” Jessica Hyder, Tech’s Relay for Life chairman, said. “Then everybody chose a theme that was underneath that, such as walking under a ladder, black cats or broken mirrors.”
The Relay for Life event is made up of teams that walk around a track from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Saturday.
“At least one person from each of the teams walks at all times,” Caitlin Harrison, Tech’s Relay for Life co-chair, said. “Basically, it’s to raise awareness of cancer. Cancer never sleeps.”
There are 58 teams registered to participate in the event.
As of Tuesday, the three teams that have raised the most money are Tech’s Service Learning, Chem Med’s first team and Fiji’s second team.
“We’re only having 13 people per team,” Harrison said. “So it goes with the superstitions theme as well.”
Harrison said the organization usually plans for the event to be held on Main Quad, but the event often has to be moved to the Fitness Center because of bad weather.
“Every year we’ve gotten rained out,” Harrison said. “We’re hoping if we plan to have it inside, we’ll be able to have it outside.”
The Luminaria ceremony begins at 9 p.m. Harrison said the ceremony is a silent walk where attendees can pay their respects. The first lap is the survivors’ lap.
Hyder said Luminaria is one of her favorite ceremonies.
“We break glow sticks, and put them all in bags and walk around,” Hyder said. “It’s just a really cool thing we do in honor of all the people that have had cancer or lost people to cancer.”
Teams, as well as the Relay for Life Committee, will have different games set up for participants to play throughout the event.
“All of the teams will be set up, and they’ll all be doing their own games,” Hyder said. “Most of them will have food of some sort to sell-this is kind of a side thing. If they get bored in there, they can go play the games, and they’re actually really entertaining to watch.”
Some of the games the Committee is hosting are potato golf, a frozen T-shirt contest, minute to win it, corn hole, a scavenger hunt and relay olympics.
“It’s open to everybody all night long,” Hyder said. “They can come and play games and have a good time.”
Last year’s Relay for Life event raised $26,000 for the American Cancer Society.
