The largest group of students to complete UConn Health’s traditional summer-long cross-country bicycle tour is home, completing the journey Tuesday on the Atlantic shore at Hammonasset Beach State Park.
Eight students took part in Coast to Coast for a Cause, the 18th edition of the ride that originated with a pair of medical students spending the summer pedaling home from the Pacific to raise money for leukemia research.
The beneficiaries have changed over the years; this year’s cause is the REACH (Reproductive Equity, Access & CHoice) Fund of Connecticut.
This year’s group split into teams. Dental student Keelin Hurtt and medical students Liz Narwold and Kayla Kendall made up one team, while the other team included Olivia Hudson (master’s, social work) and medical students Claire Surkis, Maura Radigan, Audrey Grotheer, and Rogan Kaisen.
“I am so proud of my team members, all that we’ve overcome on this journey, and the cause we’re supporting,” Surkis says. “It’s bittersweet to be off the bike, but I am forever changed and forever grateful because of this experience.”
In less than two months, they pedaled roughly 3,000 miles, primarily along the bike route known as the Northern Tier, which briefly took them into Canada by the Great Lakes and back into the U.S. near Niagara Falls.
“I’m sad to say goodbye to this adventure,” Narwold says. “Mixed into the sadness is a feeling of love for my fellow bikers and pride for what we’ve accomplished. We are so much stronger than we ever could’ve imagined.”
Along the way, two of them got engaged. Kaisen says the group helped him find the ideal spot in Montana’s Glacier National Park to propose to Hudson.
“I pretended that I left my phone at the park and asked Olivia if she would come back with me,” Kaisen reports in the cyclists’ blog. “She was confused why I wanted her to come back, and was more interested in a butterfly on the road (which is very understandable). Eventually, despite a pounding heart, I was able to get down on one knee and propose to the love of my life. And she said yes!”
Grotheer, Radigan, Surkis, Hudson, and Kaisen arrived on the UConn Health campus in Farmington in the rain Monday afternoon, greeted by family, friends, and classmates, including Kendall, Narwold and Hurtt, who had returned to campus two days earlier.
“I saw the school and then heard the cheers,” Kendall recalls from her approach to campus. “OMG this was it, we had done it! I had to try to hold it together or else I wouldn’t be able to bike. I couldn’t believe it. I was so proud of us.”
As they reached the East Coast, they had raised $23,000 so far. There’s still time to support the students and their cause.
Learn more about the 2023 Coast to Coast for a Cause.
See additional details from the students’ journey on their blog.
