Marathon hockey games support cancer research
Sixth event, coming in February, aims to raise $2 million to help young patients
Jordan Iszcenko is a 19-year-old film editing and production student at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
He used to be an active teenager who liked sports and dance.
When he was 16, he started having pain in his right shoulder that would not go away.
A few tests and MRIs later, the pain was determined to be from bone cancer — osteosarcoma. Now the cancer has spread to his lungs.
On Thursday morning, Iszcenko was at Saiker’s Acres in Sherwood Park as optometrist Brent Saik, the founder and organizer of the World’s Longest Hockey Game, announced the date of the next game, a fundraiser for cancer research.
From Feb. 9 to 19, Saik and 39 other hockey players will put hockey sticks to ice with a goal to raise $2 million.
Saik started the World’s Longest Hockey Game in 2003 and planned to dedicate the event to his father’s memory. Saik said his father inspired him to give back to the community. But before the game began, his wife, Susan Saik, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and died just before those first 85 hours of hockey were done.
“An event like this raises awareness for young patient cancers,” Iszcenko said.
Saik said the game has always
An event like this raises awareness for young patient cancers. JORDAN ISZCENKO
been directed toward pediatric cancer.
“I have kids and I don’t want to see them (get cancer),” he said.
Saik hopes to contribute funds toward Alberta cancer research to benefit PROFYLE — precision oncology for young people — a fiveyear study beginning next year involving about 500 young adults.
Dr. Paul Grundy, a pediatric oncologist at the Stollery Children’s Hospital, said the research aims to give patients quicker access to new therapies that target the genetic makeup of rare cancers.
“This study is complicated and has several levels,” he said.
At the first level, the patients who don’t have effective treatments are identified, a sample of their tumour is taken and the genes from the tumour are analyzed.
The next level involves experts from across the country coming together and studying the information, and identifying whether there are existing treatments for the patient.
The third level is when genes have been found that are mutated or changed.
“We can take those genes and study them to see how that’s making a cancer,” Grundy said.
“That information will ultimately lead to developing new drugs, which will attack that gene. So this money is going toward this study.”
Anybody who wants to contribute toward the game can go to the World’s Longest Hockey Game link on the Alberta cancer website.