Four UConn medical students are gearing up to spend their last free summer bicycling cross-country to raise money for charity.

The charity and the name are new this year, but “Coast to Coast for a Cause” is the continuation of a UConn tradition that goes back to the summer of 2006, when two first-year medical students pedaled home from San Francisco to raise money for leukemia research.

On June 8, Abbie Doelger, Gerard Kerins, Dan Prior and Emily Wilkins flew to Seattle and began the 3,500-mile bicycle journey back east, all to raise money for The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Connecticut.

The students have a blog that they will try to keep updated regularly during their travels: https://coast2coastforacause2016.wordpress.com. It includes a How to Help page for those interested in supporting the effort.

“I’ve never done a long bike trip before, but I love camping, I love outdoor adventures, and when I realized that I could do this and it would be a legitimate way to spend the summer, my motivation was very high,” Prior says. “Especially once we had the opportunity to pick our own charity to partner with.”

It was Prior who had made the connection with The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp. He first volunteered for the summer camp in 2011 following his freshman year at Middlebury (Vermont) College, and he’s been involved with the camp every summer since. He says his experience there inspired him to become a doctor.

For the previous 10 years, the coast-to-coast ride raised money for the Hartford nonprofit Lea’s Foundation for Leukemia Research, originally motivated by another personal connection – that of Jeremiah Tracy, one of the students who completed that first ride. He had lost his mother to leukemia.

The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp, founded by Hollywood legend and philanthropist Paul Newman, provides a camp experience to seriously ill children at no cost to their families. Prior’s passion for “Camp,” as he simply calls it, inspired his classmates to take up the cause with him.

Wilkins spent 12 years at Camp Hazen YMCA in Chester, first as a camper, then as a counselor.

“It makes me really happy to know that our current fundraising is helping to assure that other kids get to experience the magic of camp, because my experiences there really positively shaped how I view and interact with the world,” says, Wilkins who’s had her eye on this cross-country ride for years.

“I just thought it was such a cool tradition,” she says. “It was actually one of the real contributing factors to why I ended up picking UConn for medical school.”

Doelger, who describes herself as an aspiring pediatrician, says she’s looking forward to seeing the country, and doing so on behalf of the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.

“I’ve done a good amount of traveling outside the country, but not really much inside,” Doelger says. “I wanted a break from school, and I really like to travel, so I thought this ride would be cool. And I think it will be a different kind of challenge, not science.”

Medical students often refer to the summer between the first and second years as their last free summer, because the rigors of the medical school are essentially nonstop from the start of the second year through graduation.

“Growing up, I liked being outside all the time, and I’m looking forward to going back to doing that, at least for a couple of months,” Kerins says. “But the more I’ve learned about the camp, the more I realized the importance of what we’re doing for the kids.”

On some days, the trip will demand the students cover up to 100 miles in a day, which they say is longer than any single ride they’ve done. And they say they haven’t done much riding together as a group or biking while carrying extra weight. The gear they’re taking could add up to 100 pounds between the four of them.

“Gerard’s going to carry 100 percent of our weight, because he’s the only one with good knees,” Wilkins says.

The team has been fundraising for several weeks already. Donors to Coast to Coast for a Cause 2016 will have their contributions matched by Positive Tracks, an organization that provides grants to encourage youth and young adults to use physical activity to do good. Those interested in pledging support for the ride can learn more at http://bit.ly/2016Coast.