MICDS School Community: Major Contributors to 'Pedal the Cause'

Nancy Richardson was identified as a middle school teacher at MICDS, which in reality, she is a high school teacher, and the Director of Community Services for the school. Patch regrets the error.

Blake Adamson is a junior at MICDS and a Cancer survivor. He’s healthy enough these days that he will ride in the Pedal the Cause fundraiser for the Siteman Cancer Center at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Pedal the Cause, a major fundraiser for the Siteman Cancer Center is presented by Edward Jones. Adamson will be joining some 39 fellow MICDS riders on Sunday, October 7 to bike from downtown St. Louis to their school and back.

The refueling stop

MICDS will be a site of one big mega refueling stop on the south lot of the McDonnell Center on the campus at Ladue Road. That stop will feature Y-98 radio broadcasting live; musical entertainment, cheer leaders, lots of food and beverage and much more.

The ride starts and finishes in front of the Soldier’s Memorial in downtown St. Louis with the highlight of  passing by the Siteman Center on Kingshighway and the turn-around at the stop at MICDS.

The Rams riding team is comprised of mostly upper school students.They must be 14 years of age to take part. They have been in serious training the past few months.

Support from the school community

To date, over the past three years, MICDS riders have contributed $97,000 through sign up fees, corporate donations and the like. Parent director Melissa Wright, who will be going along on the route wants to increase the donation $3,000 more to make it a nice round-even $100,000. To join the cause, anyone can donate by going to this specific website.

Wright will be riding 50 miles on a tandem bike with her husband Christopher. “We have 38 other people joining us on the Rams Ride team,” she said.

“We are very excited and the money we’ve raised has been through the generous donations of our riders families and sponsor companies.”

Wright named the key sponsor: Enterprise Leasing (all 3 years), “This year, we are riding in honor of parents who are currently fighting Cancer. We have four high school parents that we are riding for this year.”

Nancy Richardson, an MICDS high school teacher organizes the annual ride. “We have 30 students lined up just to run the refueling station. Most of our students will be there mainly to cheer on the riders.”

“Faculty, parents and alum’s all have joined our effort. They are out there at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning to support this cause,” she said.

Students play a big role in getting this done

Here are two students who will man the refueling stop.

First is Dennis Grigoryn, a sophomore. “I am a volunteer, I did it last year and it was really fun. This is a good way to get some of my (required) volunteer hours done.

My job is to oversee things, regulate things, restock food, things like that.”

Shubhi Shekhar, a sophomore also has joined the cause.

“For sure, a lot of our German class is going. A few of my friends are joining too. Everyone knows someone in their life affected by Cancer. That’s why we do this,” said Shekhar.

Saturday, children will have a 1.5 mile “Kids Challenge” downtown and on Sunday, participants can chose between a 15, 25 or 50 mile course.

Also, there will be a spinning tent outside Soldier’s Memorial. For information about this ride, this is the website.

This is the MICDS blog for the ride.