Walker's Play4TheCure Day Raises Over $3,000

The Ethel Walker School (Walker’s) again hosted Play4TheCure Day this year. Eleven middle-school field hockey teams joined Walker’s, and raised $3,050 for the National Foundation for Cancer Research.

Walker’s has participated in Play4TheCure since 2009.

“One of my goals is to help raise awareness for cancer patients and their families,” says Mimi Duran, Walker’s field hockey head coach. “Even the smallest donation helps fight this devastating disease.”

For Coach Duran, the fight is personal; her father died of cancer when she was just five years old.

This year’s event was dedicated to the assistant coach’s mother, Donna Finn, who lost her battle with cancer last spring.

Duran has been head coach since 2007. She brings thirty years of experience to the program, and is committed to creating a program that promotes players’ character, leadership, discipline, a desire to excel, and pride in the school.

“I believe that the athletes need to work together both on and off the field,” says Duran. “We find opportunities to commit ourselves as a team not only on the field but in volunteering to help others.”

Walker’s first foray into field hockey fundraising was Relay for Life, which also raises funds to benefit cancer research.

“The girls liked the Relay for Life event, and decided they wanted to do more to involve other teams and raise more funds,” says Duran. “They’re the ones who decided to participate in Play4TheCure. And in 2011 they decided they could do more to involve more teams; that’s when they decided to run a 4-team middle-school play day. From 2011 – 2015 the team has donated nearly $10,000 toward cancer research.”

Duran’s proud of her girls, and believes that their initiative and their pride in the money raised provide lifelong lessons that will serve them well.

Play4TheCure offers teams and individuals in any sport or competitive endeavor an opportunity to use their competition as a platform to raise funds for cancer research.

Walker’s has won both the CISAC League and Tournament titles from 2007-2014, and was a WNEPSA Class C division winner in 2010. Coach Duran has been coaching in the United States Field Hockey Association Futures Program since 1995. She has taken athletes to the National Field Hockey Festival since the early 1990s. She was inducted into the Connecticut Field Hockey Hall of Fame earlier this year.

Photo courtesy of Ethel Walker School