With help from SouderTHON participants, club members and faculty, the high school raised $85,732 to support the lives of children fighting childhood cancer during a 12-hour lock-in event from 6 p.m. on Friday, February 21, until 6 a.m. on Saturday, February 22.
According to SouderTHON advisor Melissa Kling, SouderTHON “is both community and school wide event that runs from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m.”
“Community hours are from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. where we invite the community to come out, and we have lots of different activities,” Kling said. “Then the lock-in is a 12-hour fundraiser for students to raise money for The Peter Powerhouse Foundation where we do all sorts of different activities to help keep the kids up.”
Community hours included a bounce-house, a meet the characters meet and greet, food trucks, games, raffles and several tables run by clubs at the high school.
For co-chair Maya Bernhauser, community hours is a time where “the community can come out, participate in the events and have fun.”
“Every club has a table during community hours, so all of us are there during community hour, talking to younger students and getting them excited for THON,” Bernhauser said.
Co-chair Reece Pirrone shared a similar outlook. Pirrone said community hours are so important because she enjoys the idea of bringing both the younger students as well as their families to the high school to show them “what the high school is about.”
“I think it’s not even just bringing our community, but it’s bringing a bunch of communities together, and really it’s for a good cause,” Pirrone said.
This year, over 2,000 people gathered at the high school for community hours alone, while 600 students stayed overnight.
For this year’s THON, Kling’s goal was to bring school spirit back to the high school.
“I wanted kids to just have a good time and go back to what school used to be like for a long time, and raise a lot of money for The Peter Powerhouse Foundation.
Kling said Bernhauser is the one who came up with the theme of “Be the Hero.”
“The theme is ‘be the hero’ to the kids,” Bernhauser said, “and just add a fun theme [to THON] because in past years, we never really did a theme.”
During the lock-in portion of the night, students took part in a variety of activities to help them stay awake for the 12 hours. Several hours were dedicated to dancing.
“We did a talent show,” Kling said. “We did a pickleball tournament with over 40 teams who signed up. We did line dancing with DJ Glatts. We held our Mr. Souderton competition, and just lots of dancing [throughout the night].”
For Pirrone, the idea of THON is to give back to the community and “make it fun for everyone.”