Annual event brings Carolina, Clemson chapters together
One hundred and thirty-eight miles from Clemson seemed a bit shorter last week as the South Carolina and Clemson chapters of Sigma Nu fraternity finished their 37th annual Game Ball Run as part of a run-up to next week’s football game.
The event, which this year benefited the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, started Thursday night at 5 p.m. as Clemson’s chapter began running the ball to a midway point in Greenwood, South Carolina.
Baker Mills, third-year biology student and Sigma Nu’s philanthropy chairman, played a large part in organizing this year’s run, which for USC’s brothers started at 2 a.m. Friday after a meeting with
Clemson’s members at a Greenwood Huddle House restaurant.
“At the beginning of the run everybody wants to get out and run and see how hard they can run,” said Mills. “But three hours later, you look back and see that everyone is asleep — until you can wake people back up you’ve only got about five runners still ready to go.”
The brothers were escorted by USC’s Division of Law Enforcement and Safety all the way through their long trek, with most runners only making it a few miles before switching off to fresher legs.
“Every year we have guys who will talk about how they’ll run 15 miles,” said Mills. “There was actually a Sigma Nu at Clemson who ran it, like, 14 miles straight and we had a bunch of guys talk about how they were going to beat it.
“So we made a little competition out of it, and I think we had one guy make it a bit over 10 miles, but he was pretty much dead after that.”
Overall, the rivalry between Clemson and USC was momentarily set aside in favor of mutual brotherhood in the name of philanthropy.
“We always like to talk a bunch of smack about the football teams, but we are good friends so it’s really just a fun competition between us,” Mills said. “It’s fun to get together for something like this, and it brings the two schools together.”
The move to benefit cystic fibrosis research over the last year’s focus on multiple sclerosis stemmed from two Sigma Nu members who have a brother diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. The immediacy of the disease’s impact on the fraternity brought a sense of closeness to the event, which, for the first time, included alumni observers, some of whom even volunteered to help run.
“We saw it as a chance to do something good closer to home,” Mills said. “It was a chance to get involved with a charity that meant a lot to us — to support them and still be involved with a good cause … Sometimes these events just seem kind of common for us, so it’s cool to actually see that we’re making a difference in people’s lives. I think it was special to know that we could do something to help them, and to do our part, even if it was just a small part, in this huge fight against CF.”