Article and Photo By: Bob Vrbanac
The Waterloo Collegiate Vikings senior girls basketball program
hasn’t had to deal with a lot of heartbreaking losses on or off the
court in the past decade.
Especially a loss this big and this emotional.
But when one of the best players the program has ever produced in
Julie Devenny passed away March 19 after a five-year battle with breast
cancer, one of her former coaches felt it was time to rally the school
community around her fighting spirit one more time. Craig Nickel, the
school’s activities director and one of the organizers of the Relay for
Life event at WCI on June 1, invoked her memory as he asked staff,
students at the community at large to join in the fight against cancer.
“The three previous Relays that I’ve helped organize were a little
more generic for me, but in 2012 it’s much more personal for me,” said
Nickel. ”She spent five years battling breast cancer — at first we
thought successfully — but ultimately, she lost the battle.
“It just seemed something so perverse that somebody so young, so good
and so wholesome could be stricken with that disease and die from it.
When I do Relay for Life this year it will be for Julie and all the
other people who struggle with cancer.”
Devenny, who was only 30 years old, won three straight Waterloo
County senior titles for the Vikings to kick off the 2000s, before going
on to play for the University of Waterloo Warriors, where she was named
the Canadian Interuniversity Rookie of the Year in 2002.
During both stops she played for Nickel, and her former coach says
she was more than a great athlete, she was a tremendous person who set a
positive example as a student, leader and friend.
“Julie was such a tremendous athlete at WCI that people forget what a
great student she was. She was a 90-plus student here who went on to
study honours kinesiology at the University of Waterloo,” said Nickel.
“She also was a important member of Grand River Sports Medicine as
sports physiotherapist.”
It’s not the first time that the WCI community has rallied around
Devenny. When she was first diagnosed with cancer in 2007 they held a
special basketball game in her honour during the first Family Day on
Feb. 18, 2008.
Devenny got a sense of just how wide her circle of support was, as
more than 600 people attended the event that raised $17,000 for the
fight against breast cancer. The biggest cheer was when she came on the
court and played against the current crop of Vikings with an alumni team
made up of her old teammates.
“They gave her a standing ovation and there were goose bumps on top of the goose bumps,” said Nickel. “Anyone who was in that gym that Monday afternoon will never forget.”
The only visible sign of her illness was the bandana she wore to
cover up the hair she lost during chemotherapy. But Nickel said her
always-present smile filled up the gym.
“It was appropriate that it was on the very first Family Day that we
supported Julie in that fight against cancer,” said Nickel. “For
(Vikings co-coach) Doug Ranton and I it is unquestionably one of the top
experiences of our teaching and coaching careers, to see not only the
WCI basketball community, but the whole Waterloo community, come out.
“What trumped the money we raised in that one day was the act of coming together and all pulling in one direction.”
The WCI Relay for Life will be hoping to recapture that family again
as more than 300 people attend in the hopes of raising more than
$50,000.
And while the luminaries ceremony remembering those no longer with us
will be particularly poignant, they’ll also be celebrating survivors —
including Nickel’s own mom Pauline, who survived a battle with lymphoma
in 2010.
“This is for my mom too,” said Nickel, who said his family has
learned that once you’ve had cancer it’s always part of your life.
The ways that cancer brings people together is shared by one of the
student leaders helping Nickel organize WCI Relay for Life event. Sarah
Strban said her life hasn’t been personally touched by cancer but since
getting involved in Relay for Life she has met a Grade 9 girl at the
school who is a cancer survivor, another student who lost her mom and
another student whose mom just won her battle with the disease.
“They’ve always said everyone knows somebody struck by cancer, but it
made it so real that that’s actually true,” said Strban. “I’ve met so
many people in this WCI community that I never knew have had these
horrible things happen to them.
“I don’t have a personal connection to cancer but it was eye opening to see how everyone else does.”
That includes Nickel. Strban’s dad is a doctor and treated Pauline Nickel for complications from her chemotherapy.
“Thankfully she’s beaten cancer, and Sarah’s dad helped her in her
treatment,” said Nickel. “It just goes to show how small a world it
really is.”
For more information, or to support WCI’s Relay for Life, visit www.cancer.ca/ontario.aspx
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