Portage County Gazette

By John Kemmeter

The Stevens Point Area Senior High School (SPASH) football team will host the fifth annual Blackout Cancer Game when it takes on Marshfield at 5 p.m. at Community Stadium at Goerke Field Friday, Sept. 20.

Since the event started in 2015, SPASH and Marshfield have alternated as the host for the Blackout Cancer Game, with proceeds raised from the event to benefit a recipient from the home team.

“Unfortunately we have three players on our team who all have a parent that has been recently diagnosed and is battling with cancer,” said SPASH football head coach Pete McAdams. “We have Nathan Engelkes’ mother, Ben Raczek’s father, and also Romeo Vang’s father.

“Those three are who we’re dedicating this game to,” he said. “And the beneficiary of this event is specifically going to Mark Raczek and his family, to help in any way possible with his battle right now with cancer.”

Mark Raczek, whose son Ben is a sophomore linebacker for SPASH this season, played football in high school for his father, former longtime Pacelli Catholic High School football head coach Bob Raczek, who died in 2013 following a long battle with cancer.

“Mark is one of the three boys in that family, and at a way too young of an age to be stricken with this horrible illness right now,” said McAdams. “And so it’s been a very trying time for their entire family, this diagnosis just occurred in July, and it was unfortunately quite progressive.”

On Friday night, there will be a moment of silence just before the start of the national anthem, where fans can hold “Stand Up for Cancer” cards, which include a space for them to write the name of someone who has been stricken by cancer.

Donations will also be taken at each entrance, where the “Stand Up for Cancer” cards will be given out.

A basket raffle will go on during the first half of the game, and each of the recipients from the five years of the Blackout Cancer Game will be introduced at halftime.

Between SPASH and Marshfield, almost 1,700 T-shirts have been sold for this Friday, while numerous local businesses have made donations to help support the event.

“In five years, we’ve raised nearly $100,000 to support local recipients and the Stevens Point and Marshfield cancer centers,” said Amy Helton, who started the Blackout Cancer Game with McAdams in 2015 after her nephew, former SPASH football player Tyler Jaworski, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. “The success of this event is credited to the generous community and businesses of Stevens Point and Marshfield.”

Over the last five years, McAdams said that the Blackout Cancer Game has been a tremendous event to be able to focus on all of the people who have been battling cancer, may have lost battles to cancer, and those who will be battling cancer.

“There’s probably not a single person on our team that doesn’t know someone who’s been affected in a negative way by this horrible illness, so I think it does a couple of things,” said McAdams. “It obviously helps us to be able to play for something greater, a greater cause than the actual game itself.

“But also it puts the game in perspective, with the game of life, and unfortunately how fragile life can be sometimes,” he said.