Thanksgiving THON Hype!

Did you know we're only 4 days until 100 days til THON?!

Do you know why you should be excited about that?!

If not, boy do I have a post for you! This week I'll be chronicling the interesting history behind THON, and I'll also give you a little insight about what it's like to audition for it!

One of the first things you need to know is the real name for this event: The Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon. It's quite a mouthful, and what with us all being lazy college students, over the years that name has been shortened and it is now affectionately referred to as THON.

Now you may ask, 'What exactly is THON?' and in order to answer that, I must take you back to the beginning.

This whole shebang began way back in 1973 by PSU's Interfraternity Council (IFC) as a dance competition with the idea to raise money for charity, and to give the students something to look forward to in the grind that comes with finally being in the month of February. I guess they went hard or went home in 1973, because they started right off the bat with a 30 hour marathon and raised over $2,000! That's a lot considering there were only 78 participants!

The event kept expanding exponentially with more dancers and more money coming in year after year, with a combined total of over $137 MILLION donated to the Four Diamonds fund in order to cure pediatric cancer.

THON is the largest student run philanthropic event, and is also the largest and longest dance marathon of its time clocking in at 46 hours. The dancers are extremely crazy and committed people because they pledge to stay awake and stay standing for the whole time!

There's a lot more interesting info that I could give you, but if I've got you hooked, I strongly encourage you to visit the THON website if you want to learn more about this incredible event.

So far I haven't been exposed to many THON related undertakings, but last Sunday I had the opportunity to audition to perform on the main stage at the event! I'm a part of an all brass ensemble on campus called ROAR. It's a relatively new group, but we're ambitious and what better way to get exposure than playing to hype up 700+ tired dancer and all their supporters at the BJC?!

Anyway, auditions to perform happen in 15 minute chunks, which is pretty nerve wracking considering how much time and effort we spent putting into our performance. We chose to play an arrangement of a little diddy called Atchafalaya for the judges, which are really just a bunch of other students helping to organize this whole shebang. It was a really efficient and smoothly run operation; we went in, did our thing and introduced ourselves, and then went on our merry way.

THON is such an iconic piece of Penn State's culture, and even just having the opportunity to be a part of that still feels like such a privilege.

For that reason, I'd give this whole experience so far 10 smiling children out of 10.