NAZARETH, Pa. – Two former Nazareth Area High School athletes are joining the fight against ovarian cancer.

Cole Hilarczyk and Logan Hilarczyk have created a “Teal Strong Power Hour Challenge” during National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month this September, to raise awareness and money for ovarian cancer research.

The cousins have a very personal motivation behind the cause.

Not only cousins, Cole and Logan are best friends.

“I just call him my little brother,” said Cole, seated next to Logan.

The recent high school graduates have never missed a good workout.

But it was late July when a life of constant movement held still.

“Honestly, I didn’t believe it,” said Cole.

Cole’s mother, Dawn, was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer.

“The hardest part, I would say: the diagnosis. Telling your family and seeing the scared feelings on their faces, the fear that my children feel and my nephew, because ovarian cancer is-it’s really-it’s a silent cancer,” said Dawn.

“I couldn’t get my grasp my head around it,” said Cole.

“I knew the first thing to do was call him up and say, ‘Hey, like let’s go to the gym.’ We knew that was the thing to get our minds off of it,” said Logan.

As the saying goes, “It might not get easier, but you get stronger.”

“I was like, ‘Do you want to do something crazy?'” said Cole, recalling a later conversation with Logan. “What if we just, for 24 hours straight, we run a mile and do 100 push-ups every hour, like a ‘power hour’?”

“Immediately I was like, I was in,” said Logan, without hesitation.

Introducing the “Teal Strong Power Hour Challenge”.

Participants will run 24 miles and do 2,400 pushups over 24 hours.

“The whole point of this is we want them to know they’re not fighting alone,” said Logan.

The cousins will tackle the challenge at the Nazareth Area Middle School track, beginning Saturday at 9 a.m. and ending Sunday at 9 a.m.

Family, friends, and new faces will also lace up their sneakers; others will participate virtually from around the nation.

“When you have children that are raised on those fields and the community that comes together, it’s so special,” said Dawn.

All proceeds will go towards ovarian cancer research. Donations can be made here.

“Keep on pushing, and I really was pushing, pushing, pushing the test and some scans, and thank goodness I did,” Dawn said.  

“We don’t know if we can do it, but you can believe that we will do it,” said Cole. “Nothing is going to stop us from doing it.”