By Brendan Samuels
LocalSportsJournal.com

WHITEHALL – Ava VanderStelt’s journey on earth was shorter than her family and friends could have expected.

The impact she left on her community, however, was large and is something that continues to grow each year through the White Lake Run-It 5K.

In 2022, the 5K event was held to honor Ava’s memory and also bring attention to mental health through Hope Squad – an organization that helps high schools have the tools for suicide prevention and mental health education. Last year, more than $15,000 was raised with 167 people donating to Ava’s Hope Squad through gofundme.com.

That tradition carries on into this year as Whitehall gears up for the event on Saturday. As always, all proceeds from the Run-It 5K event will go directly to funding Hope Squads at Whitehall High School and other schools in the area. White Lake Nutrition will be sponsoring the event once more this year.

Ava Vanderstelt

“As her parents, we are devastated at the loss of our fierce, amazing daughter, and we want to help all parents that we can never to have to go through this tragic event,” Ava’s family said in a post to the Run-It 5K race page. “Ava was such an incredible powerhouse in school, sports, family, friends, animals and her faith in God. We hope to share her story and our experience working our way through this to empower parents, teachers, and students and create a healthy environment for open conversations about mental health. As parents, our pain is very real and runs so deep with the loss of our sweet Ava, but also, as parents, we realize that this tragedy has touched the hearts of so many families. We want to help all of us heal together. This community has surrounded us with great love; we are so thankful and humbled by all of this. The blessing and prayers that have been poured upon us have given us the strength to continue moving forward and staying strong for our surviving children. We want to build Ava’s Hope Squad to breathe our love back into this community and make sure that the memories of Ava will stay alive and well within all who she touched. We appreciate all the help we have been given and hope that we can give as much help back as possible. Thank you.”

This year’s installment of the Run-It 5K has already reached $1,710 on the event’s signup page. Anyone still interested in signing up to participate can do so up until the day of the race for $30 by visiting https://runsignup.com/Race/MI/Whitehall/RunIt5KWhiteLake.

The race itself is a 3.1-mile course that starts and ends at the White Lake Chamber Depot and follows the Montague-Hart Bike Trail. Runners are separated into more than 20 different groups by gender and age with top performers receiving medals and other prizes.