STLCC Lady Archers Cancer Awareness Game helps local family
By: SPENCER GLEASON
Editor-in-Chief
From the far side of the bleachers, Kane Weinberg, a family friend of Lady Archers Head Coach Shelly Ethridge, sat amongst family watching the STLCC Lady Archers basketball game on Feb. 8. It was the STLCC Lady Archers’ Sophomore Night and Cancer Awareness Game. They were playing Wentworth Military Academy, a team they had beaten by 29 points earlier this season.
By half time, the Lady Archers were ahead by eight, 35-27.
By the end of the game, the Lady Archers were down, 63-57.
For Weinberg, the score did not affect his outlook on the day. He had received chemotherapy for leukemia the day before.
With a silent auction, raffles, games and giveaways taking place; the proceeds were going to help his family pay for his treatment. He was there to support a team, who was there supporting him.
“I think for most people, at the end of their treatment, the best thing for them is to get back into the world and realize you’re still who you were before cancer,” Weinberg said in a looping commercial video that played next to the concession stand. “You can still do all the things you want to do in life.”
Weinberg, 20, was diagnosed with leukemia during the fall of his senior year at Mater Dei Catholic High School. He is in his third year of chemotherapy, which goes until September 2015.
“He went to the same high school that my nephew did,” Ethridge said. “They played in the same sports together and stuff. So all the families sit together and that’s how we got to meet the Weinbergs.”
The day marked the third annual STLCC Cancer Awareness Game, which is played in memory of Ethridge’s father, Mike Ethridge, who died in December 2011. The Gateway Grizzlies, Shenanigan’s Restaurant, as well as other local restaurants and hotels donated toward the cause. They also sold T-shirts for 15 dollars.
On Sunday, Ethridge went to the Weinberg’s house and wrote them the check — a $3,050 check.
For the Weinberg family it was just what the doctor ordered.
The family was so grateful because they just got their new insurance bill and they have to meet that deductible for his insurance to start kicking in. So, they were so grateful when we brought that check over yesterday,” Ethridge said. “The deductible was something like $2,500. We wrote them a check for $3,050 dollars and it was perfect.”
Although the game did not end in the Lady Archers’ favor, Ethridge still considered the day a success. It was a day that belonged to Weinberg.
“Nothing can take away the importance of that game. Win, lose or draw as far as basketball goes, the game was successful, with being able to write a check to a cancer patient of that stature,” Ethridge said. “It was a successful event. Naturally, we would’ve liked to have won the game, with it being our sophomore night and the Cancer Awareness Game, but it still turned
