Click here for the AFCA Coach To Cure website
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. - Take a look at their shoulders during the game Saturday night in Tucker Stadium. The Tennessee Tech football coaching staff is one of many across the country that will participate during Saturday's game in the "Coach To Cure" program in support of the search to find a cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
Coach Watson Brown's entire staff will sport the patch, a small reminder of the work going on to fund research and find a cure for Duchenne, the most prolific genetic killer diagnosed in childhood. Coach to Cure MD is a gameday charity partnership between the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) and ParentProject Muscular Dystrophy.
This Saturday, all over the country, college coaches will come together to focus the attention of the nation's sports fans on the fight to cure the disease. AFCA member coaches will participate by wearing a Coach to Cure MD patch on the sidelines and talking about the cause in their interviews and media appearances.
This year, over 11,000 coaches are expected to participate.
Young men battling Duchenne who should be on our football fields face a much tougher opponent.
The boys fighting Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy typically lose their ability to walk before they are teenagers. They stop running. They stop walking. The stop moving. They stop breathing. All of them. The life expectancy for this cruel disorder is just to the 20s, and it's 100 percent fatal. College and High School coaches are determined to help change that.
Just like football success only comes with teamwork, help is needed to make Coach to Cure MD a success. Football fans can donate to life-saving research by either going online at www.coachtocuremd.org or by texting the word CURE to 90999 on their mobile phones to give $5 on the next mobile phone bill.
Since the AFCA launched this partnership in 2008, college football's backers have generously given roughly $1 million in cash and other donations. Those gifts have raised awareness of this great cause and helped fund critical research grants from ParentProject MD to university faculty at schools ranging from Florida to Missouri to UCLA, Ohio State and Penn, among others.