Weyburn residents in the northeast corner of the city will be used to seeing an 11-year-old boy rollerblading every day along the Tatagwa Parkway path.
Bennett Weger has a firm goal in his mind as he rollerblades, and then takes shots on a hockey net in his garage, as he is raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, along with his family who have formed “Team Teresa”.
The team is named for Bennett’s oldest sister Teresa, who lives with cystic fibrosis, and their collective goal is to cover 4,300 kilometres, a goal based on the number of Canadians who have this disease.
“My goal is to raise $5,000 for cystic fibrosis, and so far I’ve raised about $3,100,” said Bennett. On Thursday he rollerbladed 31.6 km, with the goal to hit about 65 km a week as part of his quest to raise funds. As of that day, he estimated he’s reached around 200 km so far. He added he also has done around 1,200 hockey shots as of Thursday.
Last year when he began his campaign, he set up a Facebook page where he logs his progress each day, and people who want to support him can make pledges there and follow his daily journey. (The page can be found at “Bennett’s Rollerblading for Cystic Fibrosis Challenge”.)
The challenge was initially going to go for the month of May, but due to his extremely busy schedule, he extended the challenge until June 15 to allow him more time to get in some rollerblading and hockey shots, “because of how it’s been more busy than last year when we were in quarantine,” he said.
His end-goal for the hockey shots is 4,300, again based on the number of people who have CF across Canada.
“Bennett is one of the members of Team Teresa, so we’re trying to either walk, bike, run or rollerblade 4,300 km in the month of May,” added Bennett’s dad, Mike.
He noted that in addition to this activity, Bennett has also put out the request to the community for donations of bottles and cans to cash in at SARCAN.
The family did this last year with the help of Weyburn Minor Ball, so this year, Bennett wants to pay the favour forward and will donate half of the proceeds of his cans and bottles to Weyburn Minor Ball, and half to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
To assist in the donations, he and his sisters are willing to pick up bags of donations from people’s homes if they are unable to bring them in to the bottle depot themselves.
“I’m doing this for my sister and for everyone who has CF in Canada,” said Bennett.
There are some days when the weather hasn’t been cooperative, such as the May long weekend when it was cool and rainy much of the time.
“When that happens, I want to do more kilometres the next week and then I can catch up on the kilometres I missed,” said Bennett.
