Several locals are among the men doing the MOST to prevent sex trafficking. Sully Deel and Benny Rutherford of Pike County and Nick Kelly of Thomaston joined other athletes to play basketball for five days (121 hours) and earn the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest basketball game. The longest marathon playing basketball was achieved by MOST: Men Opposing Sex Trafficking (USA) in Fairburn, GA from March 16-21, 2025 and the event raised more than $300,000. MOST funds investigations and operations to fight sex trafficking and each STING operation costs around $30,000. Donate at WeAreMOST.org.
The final score of the record-breaking game was 13,096 to 12,972. Each player recorded around 67,000 steps per day for five days straight. That’s 32 miles a day on the basketball court! They ate and slept in rotating schedules on the sidelines between playing time.
Last year, the three men were among the 40 athletes who set a Guinness World Record for playing in the longest marathon softball game in September 2024. The game lasted five days and 59 minutes. That record-breaking event also helped raise funds to fight sex trafficking in Georgia.
In 2024, the state of Georgia was second in the U.S. for having the most confirmed human trafficking victims, second only to Nevada (according to CriminalAttorneyColumbus.com). According to MOST, men must be part of the solution, noting that 95%+ of people buying sex are men, the average age of victims when they are first trafficked is 12 and $99 billion was spent on illegal sex in 2024.
“Yes, I hold two Guinness World Records. World’s longest softball and basketball games. Each just longer than 5 days. But that part is unimportant,” said Sully Deel. “After some time of reflection, I understand that the importance of it all has nothing to do with records. It has to do with the assembly of a brotherhood that is fighting and suffering for our women and our children. Even the guys who played softball, but didn’t play basketball, showed up to support us in every way possible. Why? Brotherhood. It isn’t about the records. It isn’t about ourselves. It’s about the our mission. It’s about the disgusting taste we get in our mouths when we think about the horrors of sex trafficking. And we want to spit that taste into the face of the enemy. I see brotherhood. I see fighters. I see a new man. We count it as pure joy when we suffer. We are restored when we stand strong, firm, and steadfast in the face of the enemy. My body is destroyed and I laugh in the face of evil. My mind is exhausted and I sing praises to my God. My brothers are on all sides, Jesus Christ is in our hearts, my family is beside me, and God’s angels watch over us. So, whom shall we fear? We are just getting started.”
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