GCM Coach, Student's Efforts Provide Heartwarming Tale on Hardwood

To Marshall High School boys basketball coach Kevin Weeren, Friday night’s match up against Langley is the most important game of the season. Forget that the game is senior night. That’s just a coincidence.

Forget the fact that a win may only mean the difference between fourth and fifth place in the Liberty District. Friday’s game is bigger than playoff position.

Friday’s game is about inspiration. Friday’s game is about hope. Friday’s game is about life.

Friday’s game against Langley High School marks the fifth anniversary of Coaches vs. Cancer Night, a charity game benefiting the American Cancer Society first played in 2001.

It was a year earlier in 2000 that Weeren picked up the phone in the Marshall Basketball office and heard his mother’s voice. Just thirty minutes prior to a game against McLean, she told him that his father, Victor, a non-smoker, had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer — he had less than a year to live.

“All the sudden we were that family,” Weeren says as he reflects today. “You know there are people in your neighborhood or people in your class or so-and-so’s mom has cancer. And I knew how bad it was, but when we were that family all the sudden, I just couldn’t believe it. I started to take a really good look at it and see how many families are affected by it.”

He felt helpless, and combating that feeling was one of the primary motivations for Coaches vs. Cancer Night. When Weeren first took over as head coach in 1999 he and Langley Head Coach Brian Doyle, whom he worked with under Ed Grimm at Paul VI, had wanted to do something in a community service capacity to teach their players that there was more to life than basketball.

“We try to be a member of the community,” Weeren says. “But that first year I was just worried about getting everyone on the bus and getting to games so it was a transition year and it really didn’t get done.” That changed following his father’s diagnosis. Victor had brought Kevin into the world of sports. He had introduced him to basketball and coached Kevin’s youth team in Herndon. Having grown up in New York City, Victor followed St. John’s, and every season he would take his sons to watch the then-Redmen play Georgetown.

“He enjoyed coming home and taking us to practice,” Weeren remembers. “He lived for after work, to be with us. He loved watching his kids play. I mean he’s the ultimate fan. He would be the dad trying to start cheers in the bleachers. He loved basketball. And he instilled that love. We went to watch games all over the place. It was a great way for my dad, my brothers and I to connect. He wasn’t a real verbal guy. But this was something we shared and could spend a lot of time doing. And we did.”

It was that memory that inspired Weeren’s modest hopes for the first Coaches vs. Cancer Night.

“I wanted to raise a little bit of awareness,” Weeren says. “People suffer from this, and if we can raise some money as a by-product, great. I also wanted my kids to realize there are things more important to life than basketball. And those continue to be the goals.” Weeren received an unexpected guest that first night. For all of their closeness, Victor had never seen Kevin coach, largely due to his job in Boston as a Port Director for U.S. Customs. On the night of the first Coaches vs. Cancer game, Victor surprised his son, and got his first glimpse of Kevin in action.

“I didn’t know he was coming,” Weeren recalls. “I just saw him as my mom was wheeling him around the corner.” That game would be the last time Victor would leave the house. Two weeks after seeing his son coach for the first time, he passed away at the age of 56.

It was a tough time for Weeren and his team. Just a week earlier the team had attended the funeral for the father of Mike Mattson one of Weeren’s players. Mattson’s father had also succumbed to cancer.

“Everyone from the team was at Mike’s dad’s funeral and then a week later they all came to my dad’s funeral in Ashburn,” Weeren says. “In two weeks we had attended more funerals than I’m sure these kids ever thought that they might attend at that age.”

The cause of cancer awareness has stuck with the program and Weeren’s family ever since that trying 2001 season. Weeren’s Mother, Carol, and brothers, Scott and Joseph, come to the Coaches vs. Cancer game every year. And after he passed away, Carol buried her husband in a Marshall Basketball shirt.

Life dealt the Statesmen some tough lessons that year, but now Weeren is continuing the quest to raise cancer awareness, as well as funds for the American Cancer Society. This season, with the help of three students in a marketing class, the event will be bigger than ever before.

“This year I decided to go to the marketing sponsors in Marshall’s DECA program [Distributive Education Clubs of America, a co-curricular program designed to improve education and career opportunities in marketing],” Weeren said. “During the season there’s only so much you can do and its one of those things where we wanted to do more. By the time we got to this point in the season we were spread too thin. So the marketing sponsors Stephanie Thompson and Mary Ellen McCormick jumped right on it.”

When juniors Shaney Soderquist, Holly Grant and senior Kenan Samman, a guard on Weeren’s team, needed an idea for their DECA project one idea captured their interest.

The largest problem, as they saw it, was readily apparent. Despite the fact that the game had gone on for four years, it was unknown to both Shaney and Holly.

“Holly and I have an abnormal amount of school spirit,” Soderquist says. “We go to all the football games and all the basketball games and we had never heard about it.”

This year the trio has promoted the event to newspapers and the girls made an appearance on 98.7 WMZQ radio. They have also approached many of the school’s business partners and the 25 largest foundations in D.C., to solicit donations for the event. Samman, who has been limited in helping due to basketball games and practices has spent his time sending out letters to D.C. organizations and press releases to regional media outlets.

“They contribute a lot more than I do,” Samman says with a laugh. “I did more in the beginning, but lately the girls have just been telling me what to do and I do it.”

They’ve kept Weeren involved in the loop as well. Tuesday prior to the game against first-place W.T. Woodson, Weeren and Samman were charged with plywood to construct signage for the event. The students acknowledge that the efforts are time consuming on top of school and maintaining a social life, but insist that the cause is worth it.

“This is something we want to do a good job on. You don’t want to turn in a half-hearted effort,” Soderquist says. “When we think about Coach Weeren and the support we’ve gotten from Shannon [Thompson], it makes us want to expand it,” Grant says. “There’s just no more time.”

“If we had more time, we’d probably make it nationwide,” Soderquist says with a laugh.

The Coaches vs. Cancer moniker is more widely recognized for the collegiate tournament that features some of the nation’s top men’s basketball teams. Proceeds from that event benefit The V Foundation, created in memory of the late Jim Valvano, the former head coach at North Carolina State.

Both the team and Weeren are interested in expanding their high school version of the event to incorporate more local teams.

“High school sports are so big around here, if we just took it to the whole district for just one night the money raised would be huge,” Grant says. “It’s kids sports and a good cause. There’s no reason not to give.”

The trio has also gone around to elementary schools to promote cancer awareness and so far have been pleased with the response they’ve gotten from students. “We always listened to older girls when we were growing up, rather than our parents,” Soderquist rationalizes.

“And all the boys look up to Kenan since he’s a varsity basketball player,” Grant finishes the thought. Samman agrees and is flattered at the recognition, but his excitement is more noticeable when he tells of connecting with the fifth and sixth graders they visited.

“When we went to places like Shrevewood the kids got really into it,” Samman says. “At the end we were quizzing them and they were just rattling off the answers. We were giving them candy for the right answers, but you could tell they were actually learning the material.” The excitement the students have for the project is palpable. In an interview the girls rarely stop smiling and frequently finish each other’s sentences.

“Coach Weeren told us how he wanted to channel his energy and make a difference, if not in his father’s life than in someone else’s,” Soderquist says. “To hear someone say that makes me want to get up and do something.” “You can tell that this game means a lot to the coaches and some of the families,” Samman, who played in the game for the first time last season.

“These kids are great,” Weeren says. “They’ve been hounding a lot of people. They’re tenacious, they’re very sharp students, they’re IB students. They’ve grabbed onto this project and I can’t believe how far they’ve taken it. They’re just doing it first class.” In the previous four years, the event has raised $10,000 through donations and a portion of the games’ ticket sales. Soderquist, Grant and Samman are gunning for $7,000 this year alone, hoping that a $25 per-plate pre-game dinner for administrators and parents of both Langley and

Marshall players will boost revenues. But even this significant step could just be the beginning. “If we can do this next year and keep going with it …” Grant’s eyes go wide with excitement at the thought. “Why stop here?” Soderquist finishes her friend’s thought.

This contagious spirit is why this game is so important to Weeren. It’s about fostering a hope that people like Soderquist and Grant and Samman will make a difference. It’s about inspiring these students and fans and whoever else they can find into action. Action that, one day, might grant someone, somewhere the gift of life.

Mike Hume may be emailed at mhume@fcnp.com