Mitch Calvert
In his role as the Muskie football team’s defensive co-ordinator from 1994-2000, Brent DeBenedet schemed all sorts of preventive measures to thwart opponents’ offensives.
Now a father living in Appleton, Wis., DeBenedet and his wife, Tracy Wirtanen, are actively fundraising to help find a drug to hold off the offensives of tumor growth in children like their six-year-old son, Sami.
Sami lives with neurofibromatosis—a disorder that causes tumors to grow along nerves and tissues throughout the body.
The couple has hosted several events in support of a cure for the disease recently, including a golf tournament in Virginia, Mn. earlier this summer that was attended by Fort Frances residents Don DeBenedet, Dave Green, Ian McLennan, and Lorne Ricard.
But their most recent endeavour raised the bar significantly—with the pair participating in the “Race Across America” cycling competition.
They enlisted Peter Coons (who manages the local bike shop in Appleton, Wheel & Sprocket) and brother-in-law, Ted Miller, to complete their four-person team for the cross-country, 24-hours-a-day race that covers more than 3,000 miles from Oceanside, Calif. to Annapolis, Md.
The race is 30 percent longer than the Tour de France, and one rider from each team is required to be on the road at all times while others rest in support vehicles.
The team split in two, with each pair handling alternating 10-hour shifts on the bike.
“I played high school and college football, and I don’t think I’ve been in this good of shape since then,” DeBenedet said. “You get three hours a day of sleep and you are pedalling 100 miles a day.
“It takes a lot of people to support you,” DeBenedet added. “I can go on for hours about all the people who helped us somehow.”
DeBenedet said Utah’s Monument Valley stood out as a particular highlight of the journey that crossed 14 states.
“In Utah, there’s all these different valleys and it’s pretty cool going through there in the evening,” he noted.
The squad finished the nine-day, 3,042-mile race, which wrapped in late June, in seven days, eight hours, and 42 minutes, placing a solid 10th out of the 18 teams.
“It was surreal just to see that you made it,” DeBenedet said of the finish line.
“They call it the world’s toughest bike race, endurance-wise, [but] once we got stronger, we ended up moving up and placing in the top 10 and a lot of these teams had trained for years,” he added.
“Pete Coons has raced with elite bikers around the world and he helped train us on the efficiency of biking, so we sort of fast-tracked our way to becoming efficient bikers.”
The foursome, dubbed “Team Sami,” used the race as a tool to raise awareness of their fundraising goal of $100,000 in support of the Children’s Tumor Foundation.
With the added boost from the race, the group now has raised $48,000 towards the cause.
“It was the kick-start we wanted to build awareness,” DeBenedet explained. “We started raising money in October of ’08, [but] we got involved with the race just to give ourselves a platform so people were more willing to chip in.”
DeBenedet’s parents, Joe and Sharon, raised $1,300 here in Fort Frances alone.
“Just going around to people in the mill and neighbourhood, and $5 here, $10 there adds up, so there’s probably 50-some people in the Fort who contributed,” he noted.
DeBenedet worked in the human resources department at the local mill from 1994-2002 before transferring to Abitibi’s Thunder Bay operation. When that shut down, DeBenedet found work in Appleton at a mill operation there.
The couple also have a daughter, Lilla, eight, and a younger son, Taavi, who’s four.
“I go to Green Bay Packer games every Sunday as our mill is about 12 miles from Lambeau [Field],” DeBenedet enthused.
Those looking to donate can log on to www.ctf.org and click the “NF Endurance Team” button on the sidebar, or can do so directly by contacting Joe and Sharon DeBenedet at 274-6306.
