Junior Emily Fishman, clerk of the Community Service Council, this week took a check for $8,335 to Fox Chase Cancer Center — the money raised by AFS Kicks for Cancer and designated for melanoma research.

More than 20 sponsors and 17 teams participated in the indoor soccer tournament in late February, which raised a record amount of donations. This was the eighth year of the annual fundraiser started by Christina Furlong ’11 to increase awareness about melanoma, raise funds for research and remember her father, Ray Furlong, who died of the disease in 2009.

Dr. Jeffrey Farma, co-director of the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Program at Fox Chase, was on hand on Tuesday afternoon to receive the donation.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. “Working with the community around us is as important as anything else.”

He noted that incidence of melanoma in young females, ages 18 to 25, is on the rise and that awareness about the disease plays a vital role in prevention.

“What you do now in your life will affect all your life,” he said.

Though Fox Chase receives large national research grants, those funds often have restrictions on their use, he said. Donations from community events such as AFS Kicks for Cancer have no such limits and allow Fox Chase to do projects and research that otherwise might not be possible, he said.

An article about the fundraiser and the donation was featured, too, on the cancer center’s facebook page.