This is an ode to the good done in the name of sports. It often goes unnoticed, even as they go hand in hand through a community, goodness and sports, as seen by Stephen Nimer planning to ride his bike 100 miles on Saturday morning.
He’ll celebrate afterward with the thousands of other riders, from cancer survivors to Miami Dolphins cheerleaders, who will help the Dolphins’ Cancer Challenge surpass raising $100 million in its 16 years.
Then, on Monday, he’ll do something no one riding in the DCC does: He’ll spend that money.
“The good the DCC has done is almost endless,’’ said Nimer, director of the University of Miami’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. “A lot of the cancer centers around the country are jealous of what we have in this here.”
Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you just want your sports teams to play for you and the players to shut up and dribble.
But look at the work outside of sports this week by those inside them. Florida Panthers star Aleksander Barkov upped his careerlong commitment to the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood by giving $1 million toward its rehab center.
He’s joined by the likes of Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo, who for years has given money and time to the Chapman Partnership homeless assistance center in Miami. They join generational links with Dolphins legends Jason Taylor, who continues his community-funding foundation years after playing, and Dan Marino, who helped build an internationally recognized center for autism.
Athletes who care. It’s a thing. Franchises, too. Saturday’s DCC is the largest annual fundraiser by any NFL team. What does the $100 million raised over the DCC’s 16 years mean for the Sylvester center? Where is it applied to fight cancer?
Nimer explains that following this money isn’t typically as direct as Sylvester endowing a second faculty chair this week in the DCC’s name. Some other money helped double the space of its Griffin Research Center. Some was put to help research a nagging question.
“Whatever the treatment, why doesn’t it work on everybody?” Nimer said. “And then the treatment stops working for some people. Why? Those are two areas we’re spending a lot of investments.”
There’s a constant bigger picture for Sylvester, too.
“A lot of it is there’s a multiplier to those dollars (from the DCC),’’ Nimer said. “It has allowed us bring down great doctors and researchers and build great teams, and that allows us to apply for federal dollars and state funding for research.”
All of that helped Sylvester earn a National Cancer Institute designation in 2019. That’s the gold standard of cancer designations that allows patients and donators alike to understand Sylvester’s standards. It reconfirmed the NCI designation in 2024.
It’s hard to grow something good from something painful. That’s what often is at the root of sports and good deeds. Dolphins great and media star Jim Mandich suffered from bile-duct cancer in 2010. He and the team came up with this DCC fundraiser to help Sylvester, where he got treatment.
Mandich left plenty of memories across South Florida, from being a tight end on the 1972 Perfect Season to loving his, “green lizards” beer (Heineken). But his legacy soon will be what he started with the DCC, and it will live long after he died in 2011.
His sons, Michael and Nick, will form “Team Maddog” again, as they’ve watched it grow from an idea into an event of more than 8,000 participants. So have the changing cast of Dolphins players. Sylvester, too, started a “Believe In You” program four years ago for surviving cancer patients to ride or walk in the DCC. The idea folded into the center’s program of not just having patients survive cancer but reclaim the full activity of their lives.
“More than 200 survivors will be in the DCC this year,’’ Nimer said.
Nimer began cycling in the event 14 years ago when he was ill-prepared. It was held on a Saturday and Sunday then, and he did back-to-back 100- and 75-mile rides.
“They were the ninth and 10th times I’d been on a bike,’’ he said. “At some of the rest stops people were looking at me like I wasn’t going to make it.”
He became a regular cyclist. He’ll do Saturday’s 100 miles. He’ll be part of the good being done in the name of sports that especially this week, from Barkov to the DCC, everyone should notice.
Florida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov, a longtime supporter of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, wipes away tears as he watches a video made for him by pediatric patients on Tuesday. His donation to the hospital this week was more than $1 million. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
