Kicking Cancer!

KICKING AWAY CANCER

Student Raises Money For Cancer

by Joshua Dyson

Many of the students and athletes here, including me, that were aware of student athlete Landen Nealy and his participation in the national charity called Kick-It, were not aware that it’s not originally from Kansas City. Kick-It was made by a child with cancer who wanted to get a group of friends together to play a kickball game, which when you think about it, it’s a really cool idea.

Kick-it Champions Program started in 2013, giving high school football kickers a chance to help “kick childhood cancer,” one field goal at a time. The fundraiser Kick-It is based in Cleveland, Ohio. Kick-it later moved onto other sports.

That then leaves the questions how and why Nealy decided to kick his way into the national wide charity? Nealy got started with Kick-It his senior year of high school. In Nealy’s junior year of high school, one of his teammates was diagnosed with leukemia who, later that summer, ended up passing away.

Nealy saw joining Kick-It as a way to honor his teammate who passed away and to also keep his memory alive. “I decided to keep doing it in college because I wanted to be the first athlete to bring it to the collegiate level and I think it would be awesome to spread it throughout the KCAC and eventually the rest of the NAIA,” stated Nealy. In his senior year of high school at Cypress Christian School in Houston, Texas, Nealy raised $32,000, for Kick-It, the best by any other kicker in the country at the time. His first goal was to raise $25,000 because 25 was his teammate’s jersey number, and Nealy met that, and a few years and kicks later the total raised has only gone up.