Men's Tennis | 12/6/2016 3:06:00 PM
ABILENE - Close to 300 participants – many of them Abilene Christian students, faculty and staff members – competed in the second-annual Hudson Wade 5K on a crisp November morning to help raise approximately $5,700 for the
Play For Rex (P4X) Foundation.
The race took place Saturday, Nov. 19 and was organized by ACU's Student Athlete Advisory Committee.
"We tripled our turnout from the year previous and there were so many more people than we were expecting that we're going to have to order more t-shirts," said SAAC President
Kyle Karnei – a senior accounting and finance major from Waco. "Our original goal was to raise $5,000, and just a few days before the event we had registered 150 people who brought in $4,400. The Wade and Fleming families and I are incredibly thankful and appreciative of everyone's assistance."
The event's namesake is 11-year old Abilene native Hudson Wade, who passed away earlier this year following a courageous five-month battle with acute myeloid leukemia. He was diagnosed with this rare strain in late September of 2015, and the inaugural HW5K was held in his honor last November while he was in the midst of chemotherapy treatments at Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth.
Hudson's parents are ACU alumni Kirk and Laura Wade.
Money from this year's race benefitted The P4X Foundation, which provides Apple iPod Touches and iTunes gift cards to pediatric cancer patients at Cook Children's Medical Center. The foundation also desires to help children and families in the Abilene area at Meek Children's Medical Center at Hendrick Medical Center, the West Texas Rehabilitation Center and Hendrick Hospice.
The P4X Foundation was established by Lance and Jill Fleming in 2012 shortly after their 10-year-old son, Rex, died following a two-year battle with brain cancer.
Lance Fleming is the Associate Director of Athletics for Media Relations at ACU.
Karnei plans to organize one more HW5K next fall prior to graduating with his master's degree.
"We'll definitely have one more of these before I leave," he said. "They're very easy to organize and make a big impact."
The Southland Gives Back initiative will profile a community service outing from each of our 13 member insitutions each weekday from Dec. 6 to 22.
