I've been involved with Swim Across America Baltimore since 2019, and this year I'm actually swimming at our annual pool swim at the Coppermine Meadowbrook Club (all thanks to our "Get Ready for a Mile" training! If you've seen me at SAA events in the past five years, I'm usually on dry land with a camera or behind the scenes working on social media posts. 

All of our fundraising supports the incredible doctors in the Swim Across America Lab at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, right here in Baltimore. Though there is federal funding for cancer research through NIH, funding is limited and competitive. SAA helps fill these gaps by providing additional resources to innovative and promising research projects that might otherwise go unfunded. This means we are often funding early-stage or high-risk, high-reward research that may not yet qualify for NIH funding. This can help researchers gather preliminary data to strengthen future applications for larger grants from entities like the NIH.

I'm swimming in honor of Annie Applegarth, Mike O'Connell, Lynne Fox, James Hepp, Sr., and Janice Woehrer. In memory of Paige Griffin and Eileen O'Connell.