James was recognised for dribbling a football 2,000 miles from Morocco to Staffordshire.
A football coach whose 2,000 mile fundraising challenge has raised over £74,000 for St Giles Hospice has been named a finalist for this year’s Pride of Britain Awards.
James Lewis, from Rugeley, featured on ITV Central this week as one of four shortlisted nominees for the West Midlands Fundraiser of the Year award, with the regional winner announced on Friday.
James was recognised for dribbling a football 2,000 miles from Morocco to Staffordshire, completing the challenge in memory of his father, who was cared for at St Giles Hospice in the last weeks of his life. James was just 11 years old at the time.
The 86 day journey tested him in ways he never expected. James was chased by stray dogs in Morocco, battled temperatures of more than 40 degrees for days at a time, and dribbled his ball over a landslide, trying not to lose it over the mountain’s edge. In France, he woke at 4am in the middle of a thunderstorm, soaked through, and had to pack up his camp and keep dribbling through the night in pitch darkness. Through it all, he said, the loneliness of three months largely spent alone was the hardest part to bear.
This is far from the first time James has pushed himself for St Giles. He has previously run home from Paris, completed a 24-hour blindfolded run, and taken on the Three Peaks Challenge, taking his lifetime fundraising for the hospice past £129,000, making him St Giles’s biggest ever individual fundraiser.
James said being named a finalist meant a huge amount, coming so soon after finishing the toughest challenge of his life.
“Some days out there I really did think I’d lose my mind, the heat, the loneliness, all of it,” James said.
To come home to this kind of recognition makes every hard day out there feel worth it. I just want to keep doing right by my dad and by St Giles.
Sam Colclough, from the fundraising team at St Giles Hospice, said the whole hospice was behind James.
When James first came to us with this idea, it sounded almost impossible, but we worked through the plan together, and watching it all come together has been incredible.
He’s given everything for this hospice over the years, and this nomination is exactly the recognition he deserves.
The overall Pride of Britain winner will be announced live at the national awards ceremony later this year.