Welcome to the team fundraising page for the 2024-2025 Scott Carter Foundation Race Season! The SCF is devoted to raising funds for children's cancer research. Scott was a 13-year old boy who died in December 1993 after a courageous three-year battle with bone cancer. He believed that if enough time, energy and money were devoted to children's cancer research, a cure could be found. During the duration of his illness, he put together a remarkable collection of sports and celebrity memorabilia, which was previously on display at the Wide World of Sports. Each year, SCF partners with runDisney to participate in all their run events to raise money and further Scott's dream of finding a cure!

I'm participating in the runDisney Springtime Surprise Challenge in honor of a member of our hockey family who thankfully has benefited from cancer research. Kaylee Marth, whose brother played hockey with my son, is a vibrant young girl who was diagnosed with leukemia 12 years ago.

On January 6, 2013 Kaylee had just returned home from a fun Disney vacation with her mom, dad and 2 brothers. While on vacation she started to not feel well, spiked a fever and was very lethargic which was not like her typical bubbly personality. Then on January 7, 2013 at the age of 3, Kaylee’s whole world would change, as she was diagnosed with B-cell, average risk, ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). Her treatments were a little over 2 years long and consisted of blood draws, spinal taps and many different types of chemo, both in the hospital and at home. She was a tough, courageous little fighter who took it all like a champ and without a port. For 8 months she went for weekly blood draws to make sure her little body was ready for the chemo treatments and, while still taking her nightly chemo meds at home, had many spinal taps and pokes. After those 8 months she would go once a month for the remainder of her treatments for blood draws, chemo and spinal taps along with nightly chemo at home. During her treatment she continued to go to preschool, dance, player soccer and ice skate. She was fortunate to be able to do these things and stay the social little butterfly she was. Her parents truly believe that this helped her so much during her treatments because it was a sense of normalcy of being a 3 year old little girl during the scary time.

Kaylee completed her treatments in April of 2015, at the age of 6 and along the way she had big plans of all the things she wanted to do when she finished her treatments and what she wanted to be when she grew up. She talked about possibly wanting to be a nurse one day so that she could help sick kids and show them that they too can get through their treatments. Her first task after treatments was to raise money to grant children with cancer a wish like she had been granted, so with the help of her parents, they threw an end of chemo celebration and raised money to do just that. She was thrilled and felt like she was on top of the world when she was able to deliver such special memories to other sick children.

Then, a couple years ago one of the girl’s in her middle school was diagnosed with Lymphoma and she had heard about it through a friend. All on her own she took it upon herself to write the sweetest letter to the little girl and went to a teacher for help on how she could get it to her. Her goal was to help the little girl realize she wasn’t alone and to give her hope that there was light at the end of the scary cancer tunnel.

Kaylee (pictured here - both when she was a young girl going through chemo and today as a cancer survivor) is now almost 16 and has been in remission for almost 10 years. She continues to be a strong, sweet, kind and caring young woman who still wants to help people and be the light that we need in the world today. While cancer was a scary bump in her road, her parents feel it helped her become the wonderful, compassionate person she is today and that she will do big things in her future.

Without the countless research for cancer, kids such as Kaylee would not have a fighting chance nor be able to have an impact on this world. Please consider donating to Scott Carter Foundation so that Scott's dream can be fulfilled and more kids can survive cancer.