For 12 hours, they laughed, shared stories of victory and celebrated their efforts in the battle against cancer.

The Galax/Carroll Relay for Life was held Friday at Tommy Thompson Field on the campus of Carroll County High School, as locals came out for the celebration, which began at 6 p.m. on Friday evening and lasted until 6 a.m. Saturday morning.

“Today, we celebrate what we’ve done and recognize our cancer survivors and caregivers and just have a nice celebration tonight for what we’ve done to help those people,” said Galax/Carroll Relay co-chair Judy Beasley. “All of our teams have worked since at least January and most of them since Relay was finished last year.”

At the beginning of the Relay, 2010 Carroll County High School graduate Lucas Webb shared his story. Nearly two years ago, Webb was diagnosed with Stage 2 testicular cancer and underwent 20 chemotherapy treatments until no trace of the disease was found during the spring semester of his junior year.

Webb said he was happy to have a role in this year’s Relay.

“It’s pretty awesome. I just want to make a difference and an impact,” Webb said. “It does my heart good to see everybody coming out here.”

Webb, who was a star soccer player for the Cavaliers and plans on attending Liberty University in the fall, told the gathering about how his faith helped heal him, and how there were times that when he was battling pain, he would read scripture and pray and the pain would go away.

Webb said he knew he had help from above in combating cancer.

“They said it was gone and I praised God. I knew it would be,” Webb said. “A lot of prayer and faith in God did the work.”

Later, cancer survivors took the first of many laps around the track, followed by a special lap for the caregivers. Doves were also released from atop the bleachers. Luminaries, which honored the memory of friends and family, were lit after dark.

Beasley said the 12 hour event is packed full of things for people to enjoy as they share in the accomplishment.

“The philosophy behind Relay is cancer does not sleep so we stay up all night,” Beasley said. “We walk around the track and have games and activities all night long. We have a pizza party at midnight, ice cream at 3 a.m., watermelon at 5 a.m. and different things all night long.”

As people walked around the track, they caught glimpses of places throughout the country. Beasley said that was all part of this year’s theme, “Relay Coast to Coast.”

“The theme this year is ‘Relay Coast to Coast.’ Each team has picked a state to represent,” she said. “As we roam around, we see states throughout the United States that they’re representing. We even have an igloo from Alaska and we’ll all be there before the night is out.”

And while Relay for Life is the Galax/Carroll group’s most visible activity for the American Cancer Society, it’s not all they do during the year.

“This is visible for the whole community to see we have programs all year long that the American Cancer Society sponsors in our area,” Beasley said. “One of our biggest is ‘Look Good, Feel Better’ which provides wigs, makeup and prostheses for breast cancer patients. We have ‘Reach to Recovery’ and ‘Road to Recovery.’”

This year, the Galax/Carroll Relay for Life raised $70,001, but teams and individuals still have until August 31 to donate and have the totals count for this year.