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Rally for Autism

The 15th annual Rally for Autism was held on Saturday, April 30, 2016 at Ritter Park in Huntington and may have been the most exciting year so far. We are constantly challenging ourselves to find new ways to expand this event, make it enjoyable and interesting for the participants, and bring our goals and commitment to the attention of the public.

As in past years, we had a pancake breakfast a week or so prior to the event, and a t-shirt contest leading up to the Rally.

We were also fortunate this year to have Michael Tolleson, an artist with Asperger’s Syndrome, do a painting at the Rally which was then raffled off.

Some of the changes we incorporated this year were:

In addition to the 40K bike route for those avid and experienced bike riders, we added a shorter 10K bike route to appeal to families.
More and more young people are showing an interest in participating in the run, so we’ve added a couple of categories to allow them the opportunity to compete against others in their own age group and perhaps win a prize. The new categories were 10 years old and younger, and 11 to 14 years old. The other categories remained the same as in previous years.

But the most exciting change this year was the renaming of the Rally to the “Ruth Sullivan Rally for Autism” in recognition of the instrumental role Ruth C. Sullivan, Ph.D. played in the establishment of all three local entities that benefit from the Rally and her livelong work in the field of autism. A new logo commemorating the change was also unveiled.

We had 1,364 registered participants and once again we exceeded the numbers from the previous year. The Rally is always totally staffed by volunteers and 100% of the profits benefit our three local autism organizations: The Autism Society River Cities, Autism Services Center, and the West Virginia Autism Training Center at Marshall University. We hope you will join us again at next year’s Rally for Autism.

To view a video of the event, please click on the following link: http://mupfc.marshall.edu/~etappan/Videos/Rally2016.mp4

Autism Services Center is a private, 501(c)(3) non-profit agency providing quality services to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Cabell, Wayne, Lincoln, Mason and Putnam counties in West Virginia. We presently serve approximately 250 individuals and employ a staff of almost 500.