SCHOOLCRAFT

– A Schoolcraft coach and teacher will soon be walking with five of his friends and a goat from Arizona to Wrigley Field in Chicago to definitely raise funds for cancer research and hopefully crack a curse.

Kyle Townsend, who lives in Marcellus and is a substitute teacher and basketball coach in Schoolcraft, on Saturday will begin an 1,800-mile hike that is both a curse breaker for the Chicago Cubs and a fundraiser to dedicated to a Schoolcraft sixth-grade girl battling cancer for the second time.

"I probably haven't been training as much as I should, but I'm up for it," said Townsend, co-coach of the Schoolcraft seventh grade girls' basketball team and a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan.

Townsend and his five friends came up with the idea for the hike last summer while they were working together in Denali National Park in Alaska. "We got to talking about this," he said, "and decided, why not?"

Part of the long walk across the country is to break the dreaded "Curse of the Billy Goat." As legend has it, the "curse" began in 1945 when the Cubs were playing the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Billy Goat Den owner Billy Sianis was asked to leave a game at Wrigley Field, supposedly because his goat smelled so bad. He is quoted as saying, "Them Cubs, they aren't gonna win no more."

Since then, the Cubbies have come close a couple of times, but have not been back to the World Series. The curse has taken on legendary proportions.

Townsend laughs when asked if he thinks there really is a curse.

"I do believe there is something going on, since they have not been in the World Series since 1945," said the Cubs fan, who grew up listening and watching his beloved team on WGN.

The six "curse breakers" decided to see if they could change that by getting a billy goat and making their journey from the Cubs' spring training site at HoHoKam Park in Mesa, Ariz., all the way to the north side of Chicago. The small goat, named Connie, has been purchased and the six will be meeting in this week for the journey that begins Saturday, coincidentally on the birthday of the late Cubs great, Ron Santo.

They expect to make the trip in about 100 days, ending at Wrigley Field for a Cubs game. Team management has not exactly warmed to their adventure, Townsend said, but the Cubs magazine, Wrigleyville, has been a big supporter and will work with the hikers to get the goat into the stadium sometime in June, possibly for a White Sox-Cubs game.

"We're going to be building some kind of cart to carry the goat," said Townsend, adding that that the group will be camping or staying with friends and Cubs fans along the 1,800-mile route. "We'll be pulling the cart and taking good care of it," he said of the goat. "We won't make it walk the entire trip with us."

Since all of them have been lost family members to cancer, the six friends decided to turn the curse breaker into a fundraiser for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Washington. Their goal is to raises $100,000.

Townsend is dedicating his walk to Paxton Green, a Schoolcraft sixth grader who he learned about from his mother, Kelli Myers, a Schoolcraft schools employee. Paxton was first diagnosed with cancer when she was 2 and after long chemotherapy and radiation treatments had been healthy until last December, when at age 11 she started having pain in her arm. Bone cancer was discovered, possibly caused by her past radiation, so she is now undergoing chemotherapy again.

Myers has been letting everyone know about her son's walk and has also been selling T-shirts she made up in Schoolcraft colors with Paxton's name on the back. The shirts are selling for $15 and all proceeds will be going to the Bronson Pediatric Oncology Unit as a gift from Paxton.

Amy Green, Paxton's mother and also a Schoolcraft teacher, said her daughter and the entire family are tickled by the efforts of Townsend and his merry hikers, and by others in Schoolcraft who are helping Paxton beat cancer.

"It's pretty amazing," she said, adding that Paxton has had Townsend as a substitute teacher a few times and "she just loves him."

"She thinks the whole thing is a bit crazy, and she hates to tell him, but she's a Detroit Tigers fan," Paxton's mother said.

Her daughter has been having a bit of a rough go of it, she said, because of the exhausting, difficult treatments, but she was recently able to go to school four times a week, so that was an achievement.

"We've been overwhelmed by the support and her class has just been terrific," Amy Green said. "They lift us up."

As for the goat unwittingly pressed into duty to break the curse of the Cubs, Townsend said great care will be taken of the animal during the trip, and it's possible the goat will end up living in Marcellus when the hike is done.

"My mother wants to adopt the goat," Townsend said.

He said has great faith that the trip will be successful in its fundraising, especially once the word gets out more and as the six hikers and their animal friend make the journey of nearly 2,000 miles.

"We're going to do this," Townsend said. "It should be quite the journey."