USU student host 24-hour gaming event for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals
Gaming consoles of all types decorated the fourth floor of Old Main last friday as video gamers sat down to participate in a 24 hour-long marathon event.
This charity event, known as Extra Life, started Friday at 5 p.m. and lasted until Saturday 5 p.m. All proceeds earned went to support Miracle Children’s Network Hospitals, in this case Logan Regional Hospital.
The two rooms reserved for the event were filled with various gaming systems such as Playstations 1-4, Xbox 360’s, Wii’s, and a Super Nintendo.
Extra Life is an annual charity gaming event founded by Jeromy “Doc” Adams shortly after his best friend, Victoria Enmon, died of leukemia in 2008. The Children’s Miracle Network began hosting fundraising activities shortly before her death, but they picked up steam with the creation of Extra Life.
According to the website, extra-life.org, Victoria Enmon struggled through a four year battle with leukemia. She reentered the hospital on three different occasions, the third being the longest stay. Adam, being a gaming enthusiast, asked Enmon if she enjoyed video games to which she said she loved them. To help her with hospital costs, he hosted a 24-hour gaming marathon for her.
“I put the word out to a website that I work with called Sarcastic Gamer and the online community responded in droves,” Adams said on the website. “What I expected to be a couple of gamers that might come from here or there, instead turned out to be gamers that came from all across the world.”
While at the funeral, Adams realized he wanted to be able to do fundraisers like this for the rest of his life. Therefore, Extra Life was formed and since then has raised over 30 million dollars for hospitals.
Every year the number of participants grew and soon the cause reached the ears of two students at Utah State University.
Christopher James (CJ) Stanley and Taylor Hunsaker began hosting the Extra Life marathons a couple years ago. Hunsaker was in his second semester at Utah State when he got the idea.
“I just spent a few nights at my house playing video games,” Hunsaker said. “Had a few people donate to my account and I said to myself, this would be fun with more people, so I got (Stanley) involved and we got a bunch of people to show up and that was the first time we threw it as a hosted event.”
Stanley heard about the event when Hunsaker did.
“We both kind of did separately,” Stanley said, “but then we decided to do it as a joint effort, then we decided to get greek life involved and the hereafter, and it’s just expanded from there.”
Extra Life is now an annual event at USU, though it can be held twice annually or more, Hunsaker said.
Scott Mcgrath, a mechanical engineering student and avid gamer, was one of the participants who gamed through the night.
‘There were about 20 people consistently in the past,” McGrath said. “I don’t know entirely — I was in and out a little bit. I hung out with my friends playing ‘Super Smash Brothers.’ It’s a lot of fun.”
Morgan Smith, a computer science major, is one of the regulars to the event.
I brought my Playstation 3 with me,” Smith said. “It’s the bomb. I invited friends to come over too.”
Smith began attending last year, but had no idea what it was about at the time. Extra Life is fairly new to Utah, and is still growing in participants and sponsors.
This year, some of the local sponsors contributed prizes, food and snacks to the marathon.
“We weren’t able to get as much as we were planning,” Stanley said, “but all the prizes that we have for the tournaments, all of them came from our sponsors. We cannot be thankful enough for them.”
@fallrush92