McLean’s McDance-a-Thon gathered in the lower gym on Saturday, March 16 for their annual seven-hour dance marathon to close out this year’s fundraising for Children’s National Hospital. The club holds many fundraisers throughout the year, but the dance is the club’s main focus and biggest fundraising push, consisting of games, guest performances and speakers. This year’s theme was Live in Color to encourage all the kids at Children’s National to appreciate every moment and live their lives to the fullest.

“I do McDance-a-Thon to support an amazing cause and to dance for the kids who can’t,” sophomore Paige Bender said. “There are so many fun activities and ways to raise money and make new friends.”

The club has an amazing impact on the Children’s National community, and the dance is a way to unite McLean with kids in the hospital and anyone who has been impacted by childhood illness, with a key aspect of the event being that members stand for all seven hours.

“This year we struggled a lot with engagement, but we pulled through towards the end,” senior Anna Ntep said. “I had so much fun, and even if it was just me I’d always have fun at these things.”

The dance setup began at 9am with decorating the gym, but the actual dance was kicked off at 3pm with guest speakers Gavin and Wendy Lindberg to talk about the EVAN foundation, the organization they founded to support groundbreaking research on neuroblastoma and pediatric cancer.

Throughout the dance, the club incorporated donating into games such as limbo, knockout, hula-hooping, karaoke, and “time-out,” where you pay to send a friend to the “time-out” section and they pay to get back out. At each hour, members learned more of the morale dance, which is meant to keep people’s spirits high during the long event, and certain hours had themes such as the “Taylor Swift hour,” where they played Taylor Swift all hour for members to dance and sing along to.

“I always have fun at this dance,” club sponsor Bridget Donoghue said. “We saw everyone actively engaged, so it was a success.”

McDance-a-Thon also hosted Kara Licalsi, junior Dylan Licalsi’s mom, who came and talked about McDance-a-Thon’s impact on making her family comfortable in the community. Dr. Emily Hattwick, a pediatric hand surgeon and the Medical Director of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine at Children’s National Hospital, also came and spoke about her patients and experiences at Children’s National as well as the effect McDance-a-Thon has had on the kids.

“A lot of patients of mine are at McLean High School, and this community of kids is a large part of what I’ve seen in my 20 years of practice,” Hattwick said. “We look for ways to smile and laugh with our patients and this fundraiser helps us care for all these kids. [McDance-a-Thon] is giving back to our hospital system, so it’s my job to give to [them] and let [them] know what they’re doing to help us.”

Special student performances were from senior rapper Nathan Mahoney (“Yung Moo Bloo”), who boosted spirits and energy in the gym, and seniors Noah Asher and Philip Rotondo, who sang covers that had the whole crowd singing.

“I really enjoyed the guest performances,” sophomore Hannah Kaplan said. “I think they really got the students hype and they were excellent performers.”

The seven hours ended with the reveal of how much money the club had raised over the course of the year, including the final pushes from the event. Applause and cheers rang through the gym as the McDance-a-Thon leadership team announced that the club raised $53,765.07 for Children’s National Hospital.

“This year we definitely were short of what we wanted to get to but it was still a huge impact that we made,” Ntep said. “I’m so proud of us.”