Official Charity

Team Phoenix is the charitable benefactor for the  Tri-ing For Children’s Triathlon!

Team Phoenix is an innovative 14-week fitness and research program in which a leadership team of multidisciplinary clinicians, triathlon coaches and volunteers encourage and assist cancer survivors to regain endurance, strength, flexibility, and overall health and wellness after cancer treatment by training for a sprint-distance triathlon. As a program of Aurora Research Institute, Team Phoenix also collaborates with higher education institutions on research seeking to better understand the effects of group-led, goal-oriented exercise and psychological well-being after cancer treatment.

Team Phoenix began in 2011 as an innovative cancer program based on the multidisciplinary collaborative efforts of Judy A. Tjoe, MD, Aurora Cancer Care breast oncology surgeon and medical research director for Translational Oncology Research: Quest for Understanding & Exploration (TORQUE), and Leslie J. Waltke, DPT, cancer rehabilitation specialist for Aurora Physical Therapy.

Team Phoenix’s goals are threefold:

• Fitness: To empower cancer survivors to improve their physical and mental fitness.
• Survivorship: To redefine “survivorship” by removing physical and psychological barriers to maintaining exercise routines.
• Research: The participation and health information from Team Phoenix athletes helps the next generation of survivors by providing data for research initiatives that correlate the impact of exercise on inflammation, cancer-related fatigue and cardiac function, which may be adversely affected by cancer treatments.