Rachel Rounds, who is currently fighting cancer, had hundreds of balloons released for her at Riverdale Park on Saturday, Sept. 20.
Rachel Rounds is a local single mom who is currently fighting Stage 3 Inflammatory Breast Cancer. Rachel is very close to her family, including her daughter, Kyla Rounds.
“We’re super super close,” Kyla said. “And even closer now because I’m taking care of her.”
Rachel was diagnosed in May 2025 and as a result, the “Anything for a Friend” foundation put on a rally to help raise funds and to show their support.
“Tonight’s main thing was to raise funds to help support Rachel and the journey she has ahead of her,” Vocal Motion Director Brittany Bennett said.
One of the events held at the rally was a performance from the Vocal Motion show choir. They sang “Ordinary” by Alex Warren and prepared it in a very short amount of time.
“We only had three weeks to prepare for this, and honestly I wasn’t sure how that was going to go,” Bennett said. “But I’ll tell you what, I was so impressed with the dedication and rehearsal time that they put into it. And the kids totally showed up tonight, and I couldn’t be more proud.”
During the performance, Kyla was given the opportunity to sing the solo throughout the whole song to her mom. Rachel said that it was really special having her daughter singing to her.
“I didn’t even know what the song was,” Rachel said. “And we’re really, really close, and so that was really neat to have us kind of have that moment where she is singing with the choir but to have her look right at me, and she’s singing right to me. We’ve been through a lot together so that really was a whole moment.”
After the performance, Rachel released hundreds of balloons into the air. Rachel said the balloon release was very symbolic and special for her.
“I think that the balloon release was something that was symbolic because there is so much about cancer that is out of your control,” Rachel said. “You don’t get to pick to have it, you don’t get to pick what your treatment is, you don’t get to pick how you react to it, how it affects your life and all these things. It’s like this tiny little moment where you get to be the person who gets to decide when something happens.”
