ADAMS — Southland senior Hope Dion is living her life to the fullest and she’s hoping to inspire others to do the same.

After seeing a tragedy hit close to home with one of her teammates last year, Dion took it on herself to do two things for her senior project — organize a cross country meet in Adams and raise suicide awareness.

Dion accomplished both of those tasks on Thursday when the Grand Meadow/LeRoy-Ostrander/Southland cross country team was able to host Pacelli, Hayfield and Kingsland in a boys and girls scrimmage at Cedar River Country Club. It was the first cross country race held in Adams in program history.

Since she was running the meet, Dion wasn’t able to actually run in it. But she got plenty of exercising as she ran all across the golf course during each race to document the event with her camera.

“I kind of missed seeing everyone at meets and the excitement of the races. I did quite a bit of running by going back and forth, but not starting with everyone is kind of different,” Dion said. “There was a lot of work put into (setting up a meet) that I never realized before. There was a lot of people that helped me along the way and I’m very grateful for that.”

Besides working with the golf course to host the meet, Dion organized a dinner and t-shirt sale to raise funds for suicide awareness. Last year’s tragedy woke Dion up to the reality of suicide and it motivated her to rally against it.

“That brought (sucide) to my attention about how serious of a thing this is. I thought I would bring more awareness to everyone else,” Dion said. “(Suicide) has an effect, not only for the family, but for the community. It’s a horrible thing, but it brought our community together. I hope it never happens again and no one has to go through that.”

Rory Bickler, a Pacelli runner, won the girls scrimmage on Thursday and she was excited to run in Adams for the first time. Bickler went to school in Southland up until her seventh grade year and she’s also been active in dance with Dion for 12 years.

“This is a huge event to organize and it’s really cool that she was able to do this,” Bickler said. “Hope is always happy and go-lucky. She always has that positive energy and attitude. She always pushes others to do better.”

Bickler also had her own emotional connection to the cause behind the meet.

“I had a friend commit suicide last year and this hits close to home,” Bickler said.

Dion started running cross country as a freshman after her friend and fellow senior Maddie Merten encouraged her to join the sport. The two had run in the Dairy Days 5K together and Merten suggested that Dion join her with the GMLOS team.

“Hope is very dedicated. When she says she wants to do something, she’s going to do it,” Merten said. “We’ve always wanted to have a meet here in Adams because all of our meets are so far away. It’s nice for community members to come out and see what we’re doing.”

GMLOS head coach Lisa Glynn saw Dion begin working on the meet last winter. The goal was for GMLOS to host a regular season meet, but most teams had their schedules set up already. Glynn credited Dion for bringing a positive event to the entire community.

“The parents that have been involved in the program are so happy to have a home site,” Glynn said. “Hope has been super organized and proactive. She’s an outstanding individual. She is so caring and I think this really shows that she has this passion to do this. She’s a great kid.”

Glynn said that suicide awareness is a very important cause, especially for today’s youths.

“Mental illness and mental awareness are key right now,” Glynn said. “A lot of people have issues and bringing awareness to these issues brings people to the help that they need. I think Hope did a great job of doing this to find a way to help people that may be struggling in some manner.”

GMLOS, Hayfield and Pacelli will open the regular season in Stewartville at 4 p.m. on Aug. 29.