Norman Powell had nowhere to go. He tried a cross over, dribbled behind his back, even threw in a pump fake – but the defense didn’t bite.
The senior guard was smothered by multiple defenders – albeit ones a good foot shorter than him – and heaved a shot from beyond the arc that clanged off the back iron.
Come this men’s basketball season, such a shot would draw frowns. On Sunday, everyone was all smiles.
Powell, along with the men and women’s basketball team and hundreds of other volunteers of all ages, participated in the “Dribble for the Cure” Sunday morning.
But instead of an NCAA game, this scene played out during the “Dribble for the Cure,” an event in which Powell, along with the men’s and women’s basketball teams and hundreds of other volunteers of all ages, participated.
“This is one of our favorite events of the year,” said UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close. “This event is not about us. We are here to serve and support something so important and so much bigger than basketball.”
“Dribble for the Cure,” now in its seventh year at UCLA, raises money and awareness for pediatric cancer research.
A record $175,000-plus was raised at this year’s event, as a record number of participants turned out Sunday morning at Drake Stadium. Half of the funds raised go directly to Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA with the other half going to the Pediatric Cancer Research Fund.
For former UCLA men’s basketball player John Vallely its an event both powerful and personal.
Vallely, a member of the 1969 and 1970 UCLA men’s basketball championship teams, brought the event to UCLA in 2008 after learning about it from former USC men’s basketball coach Tim Floyd.
Vallely joined the board of the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation in 1988 after his daughter, Erin, was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a form of cancer that attacks soft muscle tissue.
Erin Vallely died at the age of 12 in 1991. Twenty-three years later, her mother, Karen, and father are striving to make a difference for other families that have been affected by cancer.
“All of us have a journey to live in life. For my wife and me, we had to live through the journey where we lost our little girl to cancer,” Vallely said. “But I think in the journey of life, we get exposed to things, difficulties, challenges and changes. And it’s how we deal with them that will make a difference.”
The difference made Sunday was readily apparent, and not just due to the near $900,000 raised since Vallely brought the event to UCLA.
Hundreds of participants clad in shirts of blue, purple, red, orange and yellow, each declaring the fundraising team they supported, dribbled the course with UCLA athletes. They all then headed into Collins Court to shoot baskets and get autographs from UCLA’s basketball teams.
It was a sight both encouraging and restoring, but still urgent.
“You can’t help but be in awe when you see just such a great amount of support for what we are doing here (today),” said Dr. Theodore B. Moore, chief, professor and clinical director of pediatric hematology/oncology at Mattel. “But we still have a battle, we’ve made an incredible progress through research … (but) it is imperative that we make new treatments and develop new treatments.”
Moore said 80 percent of children diagnosed with cancer are cured: That number needs to be higher. Moore also said that some of those 80 percent will go on to have life-long problems due to the treatments they underwent as children.
The goal is to raise funds, as the event did Sunday, to help fight a disease that is the number one cause of death by disease in children and affects a third of adults.
What became apparent Sunday, in hearing Vallely speak and watching Powell and the rest of the basketball team play against scores of volunteers, was that “Dribble for the Cure” raised not only funds, but also spirits.
“When we are here together and raising record money in the seventh year of ‘Dribble for the Cure,’ I have that feeling – even though I don’t shoot the ball into the net anymore – of nothing but net,” Vallely said as he addressed the crowd.