Paws for a Cause and the football team are banding together through the organization “Hats off for Cancer,” a campaign to raise awareness for the many types of cancer afflicting the community.

Paws for a Cause club members will be joined by football players to accept donations of hats as well as money in the cafeteria during lunches, using a banner to show their progress. “We will be at lunches starting on the 22nd of September,” Woodworth states, “[and] we’ll do that entire week before break and the week that we come back.” In addition to the cafeteria collection, donations will also be collected at all home football games starting on September 24.

“We’re trying to get donations of hats, but then we’ll take the money and either buy hats or give it to the Phoenix Children’s Hospital and Cardon Children’s Medical Center,” club advisor Shelamae Woodworth states.

The club will also be selling lavender shirts; lavender is the official cancer awareness color. They ask that these be worn on Friday, October 17 throughout the day as well as at the football game that evening. “During the day, if they have the shirt on, they can wear a hat,” Woodworth explains. Students may also pay a dollar to wear a hat and participate in ‘Mad Hatter Day’ that Friday.

Football players will be getting involved as well, by selling and attaching purple ribbons to their helmets in honor of cancer survivors as well as those lost. “We’re going to put those on our helmets for the last week of September and the month of October,” varsity football coach Preston Jones adds.

Each day of the two-week campaign will have a different cancer awareness theme, and students and staff are encouraged to wear the color of the day.

Paws for a Cause has worked jointly with Perry Football on other cancer awareness projects prior to this year. In the past, they mainly focused on breast cancer awareness, but they are widening their spectrum to all types of cancer this year. “We decided that [with] some of our staff members who had cancer, [we] didn’t want to focus solely on breast cancer; we wanted to do something different,” Woodworth shares, “so this year we are focusing on all types of cancer and all of the proceeds go to Hats Off for Cancer.”

Jones explains that the entire focus of the event is to reach out to benefit others, stating,“The idea is to try to get [students] to give a little to help those kids out.”