The MATC Stormer women’s basketball team held a “Pink Out” by wearing pink uniforms for two home games, Wednesday Feb. 12 and Saturday Feb. 15, to raise awareness and donations for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund.
The foundation is named after legendary North Carolina State University women’s team head coach Kay Yow, who passed away from breast cancer in 2009 after a 22-year fight.
MATC sold t-shirts and lapel pins at the games and also asked for direct donations to be made online. It’s a cause they took personally as breast cancer has impacted the team directly.
Head Coach Jeff Lorenz described how important it was for the team to play in the name of such an esteemed foundation. “It’s huge. My assistant coach, his sister-in-law passed away from breast cancer recently and our athletic director’s mom is recovering from breast cancer, so it’s really important for us as a basketball community and as an athletic community at MATC to really put forth a good effort and hopefully we can develop a cure at some point of time for this disease,” Lorenz stated.
Stormer guard Niki Johnson felt the focus on the cause was for the betterment of the team’s performance, “Going out there, we had somebody to play for and I think that helped us win.”
The Kay Yow Cancer Fund raises money for advanced research and for more people with breast cancer to access new forms of treatment.
Since its inception in 2007, it has raised over $8 million with 2 million of that coming from Play 4Kay games like MATC participated in.
The pink jerseys were especially popular among the team. “They wish they could play with them on every game,” Lorenz said. “I love them,” Johnson affirmed.