Spring Arbor athletics isn’t the only group of athletes that have spent time raising awareness for breast cancer.
High school athletic programs are doing it. College athletics are doing it. Professional athletics are doing it.
Breast cancer awareness doesn’t have to be October, the month of Breast Cancer Awareness. Professional baseball teams all use pink bats on Mother’s Day in May. They sell identical bats online at the Major League Baseball shop. They cost 70 dollars and can be customized. Ten dollars of the proceeds is then donated to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
The National Football League (NFL) is probably best known of all the professional sports for raising breast cancer awareness. They have a page of their website dedicated to breast cancer awareness. The website, nfl.com/pink, allows for anyone who visits to read about the program, how to reduce your risk of breast cancer, how to walk with them, advocate with them and how you can donate and bid on pink items. If you watch a game on Sunday, in October, you can see that some players wear pink gloves. They also have pink hats, the towels are pink, even the Gatorade cups that they use on the sidelines are pink.
In other college athletics, in their game against Iowa, Michigan Wolverine’s head football coach Rich Rodriguez and other members of the staff wore special pink apparel in support of breast cancer awareness.
At the high school level, football teams can get involved by partnering with nfl.com/pink. Coaches can download a toolkit. High school referees in Washington were almost penalized because they went out and bought pink whistles to use instead of the normal black ones. These penalties would have been not being able to work in the district playoffs because the pink whistles break the attire code that they are supposed to follow.
Inspiring stories about how athletes support other athletes who have been affected by breast cancer can be found at GivesMeHope.com. One story reads: “When our beloved quarterback (QB) lost his mother to breast cancer, no one thought twice about purchasing new pink uniforms with her name stitched on the back. When game day came, and the QB laid eyes on his team walking out to meet him at center field in pink, everyone cried, even the opponents. Teammates who truly care for one another, gives me hope.”
Breast cancer awareness can come from any person, in any athletic program anywhere in the United States.