Cedar Creek Teachers Taking Steps Against Cancer

Because breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, it’s often been said that even if you haven’t been diagnosed with it, chances are someone you know or someone you love has.

The prevalence of the disease has been the driving force behind the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, a national effort to raise money for breast cancer research and treatment that takes place across the country on various dates.

This Sunday in Point Pleasant Beach, Team Cedar Creek will be walking the roughly 3-mile route in honor of friends and family who have battled the disease. The team of 10-15 teachers and staff from Cedar Creek Elementary School, plus family members, will be participating for the ninth or 10th time, according to principal Jackie Ranuska.

“It started with a group of teachers who have members of their family with breast cancer,” Ranuska said, but in 2006-07, it became even more personal for the group as a staff member was battling the disease.

Team Cedar Creek has been fundraising from among the school’s staff and their family members, and they will join thousands of other walkers in Point Beach – all of them part of a greater effort that included 800,000 walkers at events nationwide in 2010 that raised more than $60 million, according to the American Cancer Society.

The Point Beach event kicks off at 10 a.m. from the Silver Lake Municipal Parking lot at the corner of Arnold and Ocean avenues, and that lot is also the finish line of the event.

Since the inception of Making Strides in 1993, nearly 7 million walkers have helped raise more than $400 million, the American Cancer Society website reports.

For more information on the Point Beach event, click here.