The Ride of the Mustang will be starting next week and George MacDougall will be hosting a bikathon to raise awareness and donations.

George MacDougall student, Alexis Jones, described the event.

"The Ride of the Mustang is a 48-hour stationary bikathon where teams of 8 to 12 people ride for scheduled amounts of time. That goes from the night into the morning. There are different activities that go on, (it's a) pretty fun time."

The event will be going from April 16 to 18 next week and Jones said that this year will mark the ninth year since the moment that started it all.

"This is our ninth year, so nine years ago one of the students from outs school got diagnosed with cancer and one of the students just really wanted to make a difference and support him, so they decided to create the Ride of the Mustang to try and support him in any way they possibly could."

Fellow student Kailey Church said that the Ride of the Mustang is a community event.

"The students are helping out by raising money, going through the community and just asking for donations. The community can help out by donating. If any businesses or anything wants to donate to the Ride of the Mustang, that would be greatly appreciated. Donations don't necessarily have to be money. We accept prizes or food donations as well."

Church and Jones both are hoping for a good turnout this year.

"Next year is our tenth year and we're hoping to get over one million dollars because we've raised about $860,000 with our last nine years. We're hoping this year we can make it to a million," commented Church

"It's such a community-based thing. There's so much excitement (with us) hitting that million mark. Especially, this is our last year, being in grade 12 and just getting that million dollar mark to celebrate," agreed Jones.

Church said she was very excited to be a part of the stationary bikathon. 

"I'm most excited about being in the gym, I guess, for 48 hours and hanging out with all of our friends. Honestly, I'm just so excited to see if we can make that million mark this year."

 

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