News > April 17, 2008

By Molly Nevola | Staff writer

Kappa Sigma fraternity, which has organized its annual Piccolo Run relay race since the early ‘80s, will host the event, a 120 mile run from the university’s old campus in Wake Forest, N.C., to the Reynolda campus, under its new name — the Mark Pruitt Run for the MacKay Foundation.

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The Kappa Sigma fraternity will hold their Mark Pruitt Run for the MacKay Foundation April 24-25. (Mary Kate Wagner/Old Gold & Black)

The run will begin April 24 in the afternoon at the original campus and will end April 25 around noon in front of Wait Chapel.

Various relay teams of at least 36 Kappa Sigma brothers will run the distance in approximately 24 hours.

Junior Mitchell Buder, co-chair of this year’s event, will run in relay himself for his second consecutive year.

“It’s a great way to connect with our alumni who ran a similar charity event during the ‘80s and to bond with brothers in a philanthropic way,” Buder said.

According to Buder, the fraternity sought to involve more of the community this year, calling on various local businesses to help sponsor the run.

And so far there has been a good response: several companies, including Putters, La Caretta and Interfraternity Council, have donated hundreds of dollars in exchange for their logo on the back of the event T-shirt.

“We’re hoping that this will get the word out about the run, and it will make it more memorable for the brothers who participate,” Buder said.

The fraternity decided this year to support the Mark C. Pruitt Scholarship Fund as well as the MacKay Foundation for Cancer Research due to their relevance to the chapter.

The scholarship fund is named after Pruitt, a former brother who died in a water skiing accident in the ‘80s before his senior year at the university.

There are two scholarships, both established in 1988, that are awarded to brothers in his name based on leadership and academic merit. The MacKay Foundation for Cancer Research is an organization that plans activities to support cancer research and education at the university’s School of Medicine’s section on hematology and oncology.

The foundation is named in memory of Bob MacKay, a man who died in December 1993 after becoming a champion of the efforts for the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at the School of Medicine.

It has no paid staff and little overhead that allows funds raised to be applied directly to ongoing cancer research.

Fraternity president junior Mark Harbaugh said that they are expecting to raise over $9,000, which is substantially more than last year’s donations.

“It’s a much bigger deal this year than last year, and we are very excited to see how it turns out,” Harbaugh said.