The new class of Texas Wranglers for the Spring 2016 semester have dedicated their inaugural service project to the brother of one of their class members who passed away from cancer this past spring.

The Texas Maverick Class finished a 200-mile memorial marathon that started in Dallas and ended at the UT Tower on Sunday afternoon. The project has raised almost $9,000 for St. Baldrick’s in the memory of Luke LaPray, current member Trey LePray’s 14-year-old brother who died earlier this year.

Justin Callison, service chair for the spring 2016 Texas Mavericks class, said the Mavericks have been working on the event all semester. 

“We’ve been working all summer on the logistics of the race, like trying to put advertisements out there, trying to get sponsors and everything and it was all for this weekend,” said Callison, an exercise science sophomore. 

Students traded off running 15 miles each from Dallas to Austin. 

“We started off at five a.m. in Victory Park Plaza right at the American Airlines Center in Dallas,” Callison said. “We ran a mile as a class together to Union Station, and from there we split into our cars and one person at a time, and we ran three bouts of five miles each.”

Texas Wranglers President Wyatt Stovall said that when LaPray’s brother died, it was a devastating loss to the entire group.

“I’m just really happy he found a group of guys he’s really close with so he could turn it around and turn it into something great like this,” Stovall said. 

“I think it just shows the values that we hold dear in our organization, we really hold our community first. I’m extremely proud to see what they’ve done, and I couldn’t be happier to have them representing us in that way.”