EDWARDSVILLE - Students at Edwardsville High School have come together to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
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Casey Stover, a junior at EHS, was nominated for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) 2025 Student Visionaries of the Year campaign. This seven-week leadership development program encourages students across the Greater St. Louis region to raise money for blood cancer research. Several EHS students have stepped forward to join Casey’s campaign, known as “Team Moving Mountains.”
“My motivation for my campaign is my grandpa,” Casey said. “He’s a non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor, and luckily for him, he was able to receive effective treatment. But I know a lot of cancer patients out there aren’t able to receive effective treatment, so my big mission pillar is research. I want to be able to support new research to develop more effective cancer treatments.”
To do so, Casey and her team have organized several events and fundraisers during the seven weeks of the campaign, which kicks off on Jan. 17 and ends on March 7, 2025. They will start with a pickleball tournament scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025.
The scramble will take place from 5–8:30 p.m. at Missouri Pickleball Club in Fenton, Missouri. Players can sign up as individuals or two-person teams for $50 a person, and all proceeds go to Casey’s campaign. Click here for more information about the pickleball fundraiser.
Casey, her mother Lynn, and her peers are also looking for local businesses to sponsor dine-to-donate nights or specials that will raise money for her campaign. All of the money goes back to LLS and their work to fund blood cancer research and support patients and their families.
Lynn noted that the campaign is an opportunity for the community to help while backing the EHS students. She pointed out that most of the student campaigns are based in St. Louis with only two groups working on the Illinois side of the river, including Casey’s.
“It’s a really great way for the community to get involved and rally around the Edwardsville High School group,” Lynn said. “There’s two teams on the Metro side of St. Louis, on the Illinois side, and everyone else has historically been over in the St. Louis area. So they’re all competing against each other, but this is the first time we’ve had two teams over in Illinois, which is pretty exciting.”
Casey explained that her team is made up of 15 fellow students, and she hopes to solicit more support after the campaign starts on Jan. 17. She noted that the students are from a wide range of backgrounds at EHS, from the band to the basketball team to the Business Professionals in America organization.
“We’ve got pretty much everyone represented from the school,” she added. “We have about 15 or so really dedicated students from Edwardsville High School. I’m really wanting to get more involved, and I’m sure as the campaign kicks up, I’ll get more people involved. But right now, we have a good 15 people. All of them are so amazing. I’m really proud of each of them for how much work they’ve put in so far.”
As the campaign starts, Casey and Lynn hope to see the Edwardsville community come together to support the EHS students and LLS’s mission to eradicate blood cancer. Lynn added that the money they raise will go directly toward this goal, with a lot of the funds staying local to the St. Louis region.
“We are very fortunate in the St. Louis area. We actually have researchers at area hospitals in St. Louis that are being funded by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society,” she explained. “There are currently 11 grants that are being funded by LLS for researchers in the St. Louis Metro area, so we have access in St. Louis to some of the most cutting-edge treatment and facilities in the country. I think that’s another thing that is pretty exciting, that we’re so close to it. We actually get some exposure to the researchers and the physicians that are doing the work.”
For more information about Casey’s campaign, including upcoming events and fundraisers and how to donate, visit the official webpage. To learn more about the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, check out LLS.org
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