October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so there is no better time to announce some changes to The Orlando Sports Foundation.
OSF’s reach is growing as it tries to raise money and promote awareness for a cure for cancer through its Cure Bowl and Cure All-Star Events.
In conjunction with the ESPN Cure Bowl, OSF has announced it is expanding its Orlando high school Cure All-Star Events. OSF will be adding to its already-successful lineup of football, girls flag football, basketball, softball and baseball all-star events, with the addition of boys and girls soccer and volleyball next year.
“County ADs asked us if we can do it for some other sports, so we wanted to try to accommodate and include others,” said OSF executive director Alan Gooch, the former UCF football player who coached as an assistant at UCF for 20 years under four different head coaches — Lou Saban, Jerry Anderson, Gene McDowell and Mike Kruczek.
“The kids have an opportunity to get in front of college coaches one more time. I know as a former college coach myself, that college coaches pay a lot of attention to all-star film and video because it’s an opportunity to evaluate best against best, a talent-ID event for college recruiters.”
There are currently 16 Cure All-Star events. That includes three football games, the Cure Football Combine, a football recruiting fair, two baseball all-star games, a softball tournament involving four counties, girls flag football, boys and girls basketball. The events include mainly five counties — Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Volusia, Flagler and Brevard.
Each event promotes “bringing teams together to find a cure for cancer,” according to OSF spokesperson Madison Mehringer-Blackburn, former national champion cheerleader at UCF.
Oak Ridge High guard, Khalise Vidal was named MVP of the Cure All-Stars girls high school basketball game in March of this year. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)
OSF, a nonprofit established in 2008, is committed to eradicating cancer, and it’s contribution to that fight has exceeded well over $4.35 million since 2015 through its involvement in charity ventures with the ESPN Cure Bowl and it’s offshoot high school all-star events.
Through those platforms, OSF has become the largest private donor to the UCF College of Medicine. Through the support of OSF, UCF opened its Cancer Research Center in Lake Nona last year.
The organization has had resounding success in its involvement with the college football bowl game each December. In 2020, the Cure Bowl and the Cure All-Star events came full circle.
Andrew Johns, former football player at Winter Garden, played in the Cure All-Star game as a Foundation Academy senior and the next season was in Camping World Stadium playing as a long snapper for the Liberty Flames in a 37-34 victory over Coastal Carolina in the Cure Bowl.
“We understand families appreciate what we and our sponsors are doing out here in the community,” Gooch said. “And we can’t do these things without sponsors, and Orlando Health has been an outstanding title sponsor for a lot of our Cure All-Star core events and we really appreciate their support in all of it.”
The Cure All-Star football games have become the marquee all-star events in Central Florida’s high school football postseason each year. There are three this year. The Lake vs. Osceola County game will be Dec. 14, at St. Cloud High. The Orange County event will be Dec. 18 at Showalter Field in Winter Park. And the Seminole vs. a Volusia-Flagler-Brevard team will be Dec. 21 at Spruce Creek High in Port Orange.
Tohopekaliga quarterback Sabby Meassick, who broke the all-time record for career pass attempts and career pass completions last week, is shown at the 2023 Cure Combine. (Chris Hays/Orlando Sentinel)
Only heart disease kills more people in the United States than cancer. Cancer research institutions estimate that this year there will be just over 2 million new cases of cancer diagnosed, and 618,000 are likely to die. That’s one in every 3.3 people diagnosed.
The UCF research facility, headed up by Dr. Annette Khaled, has been making strides in developing agents they hope will one day bring a cure to the disease.
“Ultimately her goal is to find a cure for cancer, and we’re just trying to do our part,” Gooch said. “I’m encouraged, always, by Dr. Khaled’s updates. We bring our staff down to the UCF Cancer Research Center every year to get incentivized by Dr. Khaled’s research team and we have Dr. Khaled’s team do research updates to our stakeholders every year.”
“We’ve been able to support cancer research at $6.3 million. The UCF College of Medicine Cancer Research Center let us know that the Orlando Sports Foundation Cure Bowl is their largest private donor,” Gooch said. “And anyone can tour it and see what’s going on out there.
“And we are very transparent about who’s giving what and where it’s going,” Gooch said. “We want to have integrity here.
“Cancer is certainly not the death sentence it used to be and getting that awareness out and getting research dollars to Dr. Khaled is our No. 1 goal.”
Chris Hays can be found on X.com @OS_ChrisHays.
Originally Published: October 17, 2025 at 1:10 PM EDT