I am naive enough to believe I can do anything. Several years ago, that ‘can do’ attitude fractured a bit. My friend died. She was a friend made later in life, and, for all of you Grey’s Anatomy viewers, was my person. I first met Tanya as she was wrapping treatment for a second occurrence of breast cancer. It wasn’t long before cancer returned and I started knowledge seeking. I asked questions, joined community knowledge boards, read, read, asked more questions and went at each progression with my naive mind. I now can speak cancer as if it were a second language. When Tanya died, our community, my family, me, felt there was more to do in her name. So, we put together a boys volleyball team called The Pink Panthers. Boys that loved Tanya, that played football and baseball and volleyball came together as a team to earn money for our local cancer center. The Pink Panthers earned over $11,000 for folks in our community living with cancer. That was in 2015.
Since then, Frisco Mo has grown from a tiny speck to a small dot. Last summer, I reached out to The Side-Out Foundation, an organization that is dedicated to funding game changing breast cancer research, to see if we could collaborate on some projects. The folks at Side-Out were looking for designs that were more than just volleyball, more than just cancer and more about that 'can do' attitude. We’ve come up with some great designs. They are positive, uplifting, relate to life, volleyball and each of us. I’ll talk more about the designs, the awesome Champion products, the great work The Side-Out Foundation does and my gratefulness toward the folks at Teespring over the course of this year. 100% of the profits will benefit The Side-Out Foundation, in pursuit of their mission to unify the volleyball community through youth education and empowerment to drive change in the way that breast cancer is treated.
