After three very long years, March 5, Dallastown finally danced again for the kids. 

As Mini-THON’s overall chair, I am here to tell you about the ins, outs, ups, and downs of rebuilding the culture of and hosting the first Mini-THON since 2019. 

Mini-THON 2020 would have been held on March 20, 2020. Even after the March 13, 2020 shutdown, we still held out hope for a potential event later in the year, little did we know that it would be two more years before this became a reality for us again. 

Due to the restrictions placed on us, we aren’t able to hold as many fundraisers within the school and an actual event last year, but Mini-THON was never fully gone.   

Upon returning to school in August of 2020, we were met with many challenges. We couldn’t hold full committee meetings in person due to social distancing and many of our committee members being virtual. 

We also had to find new and creative ways to hold fundraisers in a safe way. 

Last March, we held our first-ever virtual event, where we raised $50,938.15.  

Hopeful that the next year would meet us with normalcy, we moved forward with our 2021-22 committee selection process. 

Last May, I was chosen to be the overall chair of Mini-THON. With high hopes for the first potential in-person event since 2019, we started fundraising and planning immediately.

Last summer was filled with canning on Sunday mornings, car washes, and the York Township yard sale, but the real challenge was only just beginning.   

With only this year’s current seniors having had the opportunity to attend a true Mini-THON, we had to find ways to rebuild the culture. 

So many students at Dallastown have heard about Mini-THON but truly did not understand what we did or where all of our money goes. We found it extremely important to find ways to educate our peers and encourage them to promote our fundraisers and support us at them. 

Our first big re-introduction to Mini-THON was in September (Childhood Cancer Awareness Month) with our BEAT CANCER football game.

This was our first BEAT CANCER game in two years, and it proved to be extremely successful as we raised $1400 during our “Four Minutes for Four Diamonds” canning and sold over 500 shirts that week. 

This was followed by various “Why Cook on Wednesday’s” fundraisers, the homecoming dress drive, and our first-ever online holiday silent auction, all of which were huge successes, and, in my opinion, helped to get students thinking about Mini-THON and recognizing how we fundraise. 

After winter break we started promoting our donor drive. We had many people sign up so fast that we received prizes for our donor drive from Four Diamonds. 

Our participants on donor drive grew even more during push week. Suddenly, the week of the event we had over 500 people signed up on donor drive.

As the week counted down, my nerves grew high, and my excitement grew even higher. As someone who has grown up learning about THON from my Penn State alumni parents, I couldn’t fathom that I was here, about to lead our event. 

The excitement was definitely coupled with some stress, as well. I found myself losing a lot of sleep in the nights leading up to our event.

 After going so long without a Mini-THON we had to get the students to love it so that they would want to come back next year. I knew that it needed to be perfect. 

For most people, having a half-day of school on the day of Mini-THON meant going home to sleep between school and the event.

For Mini-THON committee members, it meant staying after school to set up, running around York picking up food, and getting last-minute items from Wal-Mart.  

We opened our doors at 6:30 that night, and people instantly started pouring in. Our first “together time” introduced the rundown for the night and the 2022 line dance. People seemed excited and things were looking very promising. 

The night was filled with sports tournaments such as badminton, volleyball, 3v3 basketball, and dodgeball (which my team won). We also had some amazing food sponsors and donors that kept the cafeteria stocked all night long. 

After 12 long hours of standing, dancing, games, and good food, we finally sat down for our reveal video and our grand total reveal. 

And the total was… $120,420.38, a record-breaking year for Dallastown. 

I cannot even describe what I felt when seeing the total for the first time. It was like everything that we had just worked for over the past two years rebuilding and working around so many obstacles had finally paid off. 

Not only am I so proud of this community and my peers for what we’ve accomplished, but I feel confident in saying that Mini-THON at Dallastown is officially back and will continue to stick around for many years to come.