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Relay For Life Tourney Brings Cousins Together
by Doug Green
First cousins Tyler Coates and Doug Green
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The Relay For Life Basketball Tournament was part of an American Cancer Society fundraising campaign in Madison County. You honor cancer survivors, pay tribute to those who have lost their lives to cancer, raise money to help fight the disease, and also play serious basketball.
Some play because they know someone who has or had cancer. Mars Hill Sophomore Tyler Coates played for fun, but also because his brother Ryan Coates had cancer, and Tyler understands how difficult that can be. "There's not much I could do for him while he was going through his surgery, but I could help raise money to find better ways to fight cancer," Tyler said. "It was a motivation."
Ryan is now cancer-free and is about to get married.
The tournament ran March 28-29 in the Madison High School gym. Each team had a captain who went around and tried to find good players to fill up his roster. Shane Rector, a resident of Madison County, recruited me. Then, my cousin Tyler put together a team of his own, which added a family angle to the competition.
Rector was coordinator and made out the brackets. There were six teams in the tourney - three from Madison, two from Yancey and one team from Buncombe County.
Two three-game round-robins determined the seeding in the two brackets of the main tournament. My team went undefeated and took the first seed. Tyler Coates' team finished the number one in the other bracket. They were also undefeated, and we knew we would see each other in the finals.
We had eased through the round-robin games with an average winning margin of 20 and were feeling a little worn out. Tyler's team won their three match-ups by an average of 28.
We got an hour break before the main tournament began, so my cousin and I put away our competiveness and went and ate at Subway together.
Back in action we made it easy to the finals by getting a bye in the first round and beating the Yancey team the next round. But Tyler's team got a scare in their semi-final game. The other Madison team was only down by four at half time and had the momentum. But Tyler's team got it together in the second half and won big. They had to turn right around and play us for the championship. They had a 15-minute break.
Both teams wanted to win and have bragging rights around the county. I also wanted to win because Tyler was family. There was a little trash talking before the game started between the two teams. They had the size over us. Their starting five were all well over six feet. Our starting five had three guys under six foot. Our game plan was to run and double down when the ball came inside.
"Our game plan was to stop ya'll from shooting so many threes," Coates said. This was our primary weapon, since we did lack in size.
They got the opening tip, and right off the bat they made an uncontested lay-up. "This could be a long game," our point guard Dave Cooper said. They went ahead of us by 16 with only four minutes off the clock, and I had my third foul. I went out for a while.
Tyler got a technical foul for hanging on the rim. "I didn't want to break my leg," Tyler told the ref., trying to plead his case.
Jason Worley,a former college player, anchored Tyler's team and dominated the post. We could not stop him in the post. We had to call a time out and find out a way to stop him. We put our big man Brett Rinehart on him but only slowed him down for a while.
Tyler made a steal and tossed it to a teammate who buried a three. We were down by 22 with 8:14 to go in the first half. I went back in and we got on fire hitting a bunch of threes and picking up our defensive intensity. By half time we got the score to where we were only down by eight.
The Relay for Life T-Shirt
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The second half began pretty much like the first. Tyler's team dominated and did for the rest of the game. The final score was 99-68. I was embarrassed because my cuz beat us - not only beat but humiliated us. But they were the better team and deserved to win, and I give all my props to Tyler for playing a great game.
The Relay for Life goes on.
The next fundraising event will run all night on May 16 at Madison High School, from six in the evening through six in the morning. You can go Online and join a team, or start your own. Team members walk or run laps around the track in return for donations from sponsors. There were 18 teams signed up as of April 28. Click here to sign up
For details and other ways to contribute, contact Shirley Elkins 649-2875 or Peggy Crowe 279-2824 (cell).
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