Tomorrow, June 26th, the South Carolina chapter of the Uplifting Athletes (UA), will hold their third annual Lift for Life. The Gamecocks are one of 25 colleges from around the country who participate in UA to raise awareness for rare diseases.
Rare diseases are considered diseases that impact less than 1 in 200,000 people and are generally the most underfunded and underpublicized diseases.
Events like these raise money for cures and treatments to be developed, since big pharmaceutical companies generally don’t spend the money to innovate for rare diseases, even though there are over 7,000 rare diseases that effect more than 30 million Americans every year.
USC has supported Pelizaeus Merzbacher’s disease (PMD), which is a neurological disease that impacts intellectual and motor skill functionality, since 2013, when USC became the first SEC school to join UA. PMD was chosen as USC’s rare disease to support because tailback Devin Potter cousin was diagnosed with this disease.
As you may remember from last year’s Palmetto Bowl (though we are all trying to forget that loss), there was a touchdown pledge drive where money was donated every time a touchdown was scored. Between the actual pledge and private donations for the UA organization, $2853 was raised last year for PMD research and treatment.
Clemson also joined the UA organization, selecting neuroblastoma as their rare disease; currently USC and Clemson are the only SEC teams to have an UA chapter. Uplifting Athletes as a whole US entity raised over $200,000 last year alone for rare diseases across the board.
Gamecock defensive end Devin Washington, the team captain for the UA chapter, says that he’s most excited about “seeing the Gamecock Fans getting the opportunity to enjoy some behind the scenes action,” in tomorrow’s event. We all know that our Gamecocks are amazing athletes, but tomorrow is about challenging them physically and benefiting a great cause.
The event is at 4 p.m. at the outdoor practice field and is open to the public. Help the Gamecocks reach their goal of $5000 by donating to the UA Gamecock Chapter here or by buying a lift for life t-shirt here. So far the campaign has only raised $1144 of their goal.
You can also follow the UA Gamecock Chapter on twitter @sc_uplifting.