Bellerose student burns rubber to stop cancer in its tracks

Nothing is going to break Mike Czaja’s stride when it comes to racing for an upcoming cause.

The Grade 12 student at Bellerose Composite High School is just over a month away from competing with his recently unveiled Legends of Alberta race-car in the Mac’s Froster 50 in Saskatoon. He’s in the race to win, of course, but has another larger goal in mind: beating cancer.

Czaja said the common link to success is to always move forward. Cancer took his grandfather away the same year the teen was born, followed by his uncle four years later. Those experiences gave him a resolve to help stop the disease in its tracks.

“I’ve also lost a close friend to cancer this last year and I really want to end this terrible disease,” he said. “I know cancer can be beat.”

Czaja’s aunt recently survived a battle with stage-4 cancer and that has given him a lot of hope for others to win their fights too.

Bryan Mudryk is one of those fighters. The TSN sports announcer from Boyle was only 17, the same age as many of Czaja’s classmates, when he was first diagnosed. He was lucky to enjoy a two-year period of remission before his relapse.

During the lunchtime race car unveiling at Bellerose Wednesday, Mudryk told the assembled crowd that good health is like a lottery that you can unexpectedly lose.

“You think of cancer, you think of an older parent or an uncle or a grandmother or somebody else,” he began. “I learned first-hand that cancer can strike young people, and it was a real shock.”

When he relapsed, he received treatment at the Holy Cross Hospital Cancer Institute. He only had good words about his experiences there.

“It’s an amazing facility.”

That’s one of the main reasons why he started a charity sporting event called the Bryan Mudryk Golf Classic held every June. Now in its eighth year, it has brought in more than $400,000 with all proceeds designated for the Cross, and also provides scholarships to post-secondary students getting their cancer treatments at the facility as well.

Czaja has his sights set on raising at least $25,000 towards the event’s larger fundraising goal of $100,000. The idea to use the race car to raise awareness for the golf classic came from Bryan’s mother, Terry.

“[She] suggested we bring the race car to Bryan’s charity golf tournament and to also raise money through pledges from race car enthusiasts and corporate race car sponsors.”

The idea seemed solid at the start until he realized that the tournament was on the same day as one of his big races. Mudryk’s and Czaja’s teams put their heads together to figure out how they could do both and double up the campaign’s impact. The result is that Mudryk will accept pledges for his race with proceeds funnelled to the tournament, with updates on the race provided to the golfers via Twitter.

Bellerose principal George Mentz is proud of the whole student body. Hundreds of people, Czaja included, participated in the school’s seventh annual Bike-a-Thon in March. That 48-hour event raised more than $110,000 for cancer research through the Canadian Cancer Society. He said that since most people know someone who has fought cancer, progress takes a group effort.

“It’s a team disease and we’re going to fight it as a team,” he said.

More than $1,150 was raised for the golf classic during the lunch hour event at Bellerose. This year’s event will help the Cross purchase a new positron emission tomography scanner, used to render 3D images of the body.

While Czaja has the standard pledge format, for donations of $500 or more he is also offering the opportunity to get you or your business’s name featured on his car as a sponsor.