Dear Team SPLASH.

It has been twelve years since Swim Across America was launched in Baltimore and we are as excited today as we were when we first jumped in the water in September 2010. To date, Team SPLASH alone has raised over $560,000. The Swim Across America Lab at Johns Hopkins, funded by this swim, supported the clinical trials for the ground breaking and life saving cancer drug - KeyTruda.

This year, Swim Across America Baltimore will fund a series of new and exciting research projects that will explore immunotherapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer, tumor environments of high grade neuroendocrine carcinomas, subtypes of prostate cancer for better outcomes and relapse factors of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL).

It brings us great comfort, pride and hope to support an event where we are able to know the researchers, the studies that are being conducted, and the breakthroughs being made to save lives and wipe out cancer.

This is what makes Swim Across America so different from other fundraisers. We know the impact of our effort and it is significant.

As our current team members know, Team SPLASH was formed to honor our son Alec who died on July 9, 2012 and who was a dedicated supporter of Swim Across America. SPLASH stands for Special People Like Alec Swimming for Hope. On this team we are so thankful that we are able to continue to support our inaugural honoree Pat Dayton, the poster child for cancer research. Pat is now seventen years out of her diagnosis and we are incredibly hopeful for decades of more good health to come. We are also honoring team member Kevin McKee, who died suddenly in late June 2021. Team SPLASH is so very grateful to the McKee family for their continued support of SAA.

Team SPLASH honors all cancer survivors as well as the loved ones that we have lost. We do so by listing their names on our team shirt. We swim to honor lives lost and we swim for hope for those still in the fight.

We welcome you to join our team as open water swimmers (Team SPLASH Open), pool swimmers, volunteers and donors. When you join our team please share with us the names of those you are honoring, including yourself if you are a survivor. We will support all collectively as a team and a community in the fight against cancer.

We hope you can join us in this very important and memorable event.

With deep appreciation,

Andy, Sheila, Drew and Will Cosgarea