Playing hoops for a good cause

For most of the past decade, Geneva basketball fans knew to put their cars on automatic pilot and point them toward Sycamore for the Leland Strombom Thanksgiving Tournament that marked the opening of a new season.

This year, Geneva will be one of eight teams in the annual Hoops for Healing Basketball Tournament starting Nov. 19 at Oswego and Naperville North high schools.

Coaches from the eight participating schools gathered Oct. 23 at the Edward Cancer Center in Naperville at a pre-tournament reception, highlighted by an emotional speech delivered by Buck Drach, current head football coach at West Aurora and former head coach at St. Charles East and assistant at Batavia High School.

Drach outlined the fight that his wife Rose staged before succumbing in 1999 after a 10-year battle to a rare form of sinus cancer.

"One of the best things we did was that we reached out to people for help and they reached back," Drach said.

Drach's words were at the foundation of the theme of this tournament, which will raise funds for the Camp Hope program offered through Edward Cancer Center.

Tournament officials want the student-athletes and their coaches to get involved in fund-raising for cancer care and to listen to first-hand accounts from cancer survivors, or those who lost loved ones to the disease.

"The idea came up for us to participate in this tournament when we talked to Oswego and Naperville coaches at a JV game, and we decided it would be good to come here," Geneva coach Tim Pease said.

"Winning is great and losing graciously is great, and we want our kids to learn that, but this tournament stands for bigger things than that," Pease said in addressing the coaches.

Janet Haines, executive director of the Edward Hospital Foundation, echoed that sentiment, saying the tournament is "teaching teens to care for others and play the most important game -- the game of life."

Haines told the coaches that the Camp Hope program is offered to children and grandchildren of anyone who has cancer.

"It is their chance to be with peers who are going through the same thing, having loved ones with cancer, while showing them they can be children at heart during a terrible time in their life," Haines said.

Naperville North athletic director Doug Smith brought the Hoops for Healing Tournament to his school three years ago, after having developed an identical tournament during his years at Woodstock High School.

Smith convinced officials at Oswego High School to incorporate their long-standing Thanksgiving Tournament into the Hoops for Healing event, which has raised $13,000 in two years.

In addition to Geneva, Oswego, Oswego East and Naperville North, other teams competing are Waubonsie Valley, Walter Payton College Prep, DeKalb and Illinois Math and Science Academy.

Geneva will open the tournament at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 19 against Waubonsie Valley, while Oswego will face IMSA at 7 p.m. in the orange pool bracket at Oswego High School.

In the blue pool bracket at Naperville North on Nov. 19, Oswego East will face DeKalb at 5:30 p.m. and Naperville North will face Walter Payton at 7 p.m.

The sophomore teams from all schools will compete in the same tournament format in auxiliary gyms at the schools.

Games will be played at Naperville North and Oswego on Nov. 19 and 20, then all of the action moves to Oswego High School on Nov. 23 and 24.

The full tournament schedule is posted on the Oswego High School Web site at oswego308.org.