Lily Klootwyk, a junior majoring in business management and president of University of Alabama Dance Marathon (UADM), recapped the year and deemed it a successful one for the student-led organization.

“The year as a whole was really great,” Klootwyk said. “We had a large staff of about 200 people, and we made a lot of really great improvements this year. We had our best-ever recruitment during Get On Board Day and even broke a lot of records at events and such leading up to our main event.”

According to a UA News, UADM raised $248,796 for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital at Children’s of Alabama over the past year.

The Main Event, held on February 23, was a celebration of UADM’s efforts this past year and a final push for raising money. More than 1,000 UA students attended this year’s 13.1-hour-long dance marathon at the Ferguson Student Center, where the fundraising total was also announced.

The day consisted of dancing, different games such as a limbo competition, tacky tourist hour, carnival hour and even a two-hour friendly competition versus the University of Georgia’s Dance Marathon team to keep participants motivated.

Hannah Parker, a junior majoring in political science and vice president of corporate relations for UADM, said the Main Event was excellent and that UA athletes like Tua Tagovailoa came to participate in the fun.

“We got to really see hands-on what our money was going towards,” Parker said. “Tua showed up and actually remembered some of the kids’ names from last year. He stayed for two hours playing with the kids and completely exceeded all of our expectations. It was really amazing that he did that, and hopefully he can come back again next year.”

UADM also offers additional fundraising efforts throughout the year such as various Venmo days for Greek points and another special event, DM’ing the DJs, every January.

“We are really excited about next year’s events,” Klootwyk said. “We just met with our board of directors and leadership team, so we are still in the planning phase, but I think it’s going to be a really great year with some familiar events that we’re going to bring back, but with some new as well.”

Parker said to keep growing is in UADM’s future plans.

“We want to make an impact on the campus and really maintain our goal as being a cause-based organization, because sometimes since we say we are a fundraising organization, we can kind of get caught up in the dollar sign, so we really just want to remind everyone on campus that we’re doing this for the kids, and once everyone remembers what the cause is, it makes it much more meaningful for everyone involved,” Parker said.