Market: Boston

Athlete: Matt Dionis, Circle Financial 

In the spring of 2012 my dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma. After an emergency surgery and months of intense chemotherapy and radiation he was thankfully declared cancer-free. As we were getting used to things going “back to normal” in our family, we received a phone call that my mother-in-law had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought a similar battle and thankfully reached the same cancer-free outcome. Both my dad and mother-in-law will tell you that their healthy lifestyles leading up to, as well as during, their cancer fight played a huge role in their positive outcomes.

When I was introduced to The D10 I jumped at the opportunity. I have always been an athlete - a runner in my teens and a fitness model in my twenties. More recently I have taken up powerlifting and competed in my first meet just three months before tackling The D10. I pulled a respectable 468.5 lb deadlift at my meet and felt confident that I would place well in the strength events at The D10. What I underestimated was every other non-strength event.

When I think back to game day, inevitably the first word that comes to mind is “humbling.” The D10 was humbling in that I struggled mightily with each and every running event. More importantly though, The D10 was humbling because I was able to look up in the stands and see my dad, who had just fought a much, much tougher battle. I was also humbled by the performance of my fellow competitors, in particular my own teammates. Each of us on team Circle came from different athletic backgrounds, but we each were bale to “bring it” and put together a great team performance on competition day. Thanks to our friends, family, and co-workers we also were able to bring in a very solid fundraising total.

I participated in an event called THON while I was a student at Penn State University. THON is a 48-hour dance marathon and the largest student-run philanthropy event in the world, annually raising over $10 million to fight pediatric cancer. Since graduating from Penn State I have greatly missed participating in THON and had never been able to recreate the feelings I had at the event each winter. I can honestly say The D10 brought back those same feelings of dedication, humility, and selfless love. At THON we would say everything we did was For The Kids (FTK). At The D10 those three letters, FTK, became a mantra in my head as the exhaustion and pain of competition kicked in. For The Kids, in the end that is what The D10 is all about.