Alabama archers will be taking aim at raising money for cancer research this week. The fourteeth annual event called Bow Up Against Breast Cancer Three D archery tournament will be held in Cullman this weekend. The effort began in 1996 and has raised about a quarter of a million dollars for cancer research in the state. Beth Davis is President of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama. She says this fundraiser is especially important right now…
“There's some kind of flux with research funding right now, and there's some anxiety. So people are very appreciative that we are continuing moving ahead as we do take year in, year out, funding research right here in Alabama,” she said.
Participating archers will be broken up into age groups to compete for prizes during the event. The competition won’t begin with a “ready, set, go.” Instead, the archers will make their way around the course at their own pace, shooting at eighteen targets as they go between 7 am, finishing at 5 pm. And Davis says it’s not the simple bows and arrows you might have used in high school.
“I did it in high school too, in my PE class, and it was the old traditional bows that were, you know, just arched with a string on them. And then nowadays there are compound bows with lots of gears and sights, and they're much more high tech,” she said.
Davis says the breast cancer research supported by her foundation starts with original ideas, develops these ideas, and moves them onto follow-up researchers for more work. She notes how one in eight women, and one in 726 men, will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. Since You know, so everyone knows someone who has been affected. Since the beginning of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama in 1996, over $16 million in research has been funded in the state.
