Fighting cancer and making buckets? That’s just what the Coronado Tune Squad basketball team aimed to achieve last Saturday in the city-wide Pennies for Patients basketball tournament, run by Coronado students. After speaking to other schools and gathering as much info as possible, Hailey Sedatole, Student Council’s Social Morale officer, came up with a plan to host a basketball tournament at Coronado to raise money for those affected by leukemia and lymphoma.

“It was all about combining two aspects of our school that we could build the most success off of. When we combine a social event with raising money for Pennies for Patients, we bring both school spirit and fundraising into one, just like our past Dodgeball Tournaments for Harvest of Love. Every year Student Council relies on its members to raise money themselves in class for Pennies for Patients, so this year we decided to step up and explore what other options we had,” recalls Sedatole.

Advertising a fundraiser to an entire school of roughly 1,400 students was no feat. To commence the process of getting the word out, the first step had to be constructing the official Tune Squad team. It was important to get seniors who people would want to see play and who were somewhat good at basketball, so most of the athletes turned out to be former basketball players. The final roster included Isaac Zaehler, Brock Stinson, Toby Smith, Nate Marquez, Tyler Clark, AJ Smalls, Josh Trujillo, Max VanLanker, and Judah Voss. To aid the players, coaches were recruited from the Varsity Basketball team including Jareth Morey, Ashton Rogers, Kaddin Standley, and Justin Dwinell. With a team in place, Managers Hailey Sedatole and Clara Thompson took an alternative route than simple school posters and announcements, instead deciding to use social media to their advantage and create a “Tune Squad Basketball” Instagram page, where coaches, players, and staff announcements were made to increase the hype surrounding the upcoming tournament.

This tournament started with a team from each school of non-basketball playing seniors. Coronado, TCA, Pine Creek, Rampart, Air Academy, and DCC met last Saturday to play one another in a championship to prove who the best team (and school) is. So how did we raise money? Simple. Each school that attended had a bucket at the entrance with their name on it. To have gotten into the game, you only had to pay three dollars – which went straight to your school’s bucket. Cool, right? Plus, two trophies were awarded: one for the winner of the tournament, and one for whoever raised the most money.

Game after game, Coronado fought for their spot as number one in the tournament, but unfortunately fell to the Rampart team Stratton 26-27 in the semifinals. In the end, the Pine Creek Blazers ended up taking the title as champions defeating Stratton in finals, commentated by Dylan Kleckner and Beau Thompson. While the Coronado Tune Squad lost the championship, we swept the victory in total money raised, reaching over $750. This massive fundraiser changed the game for Pennies for Patients for Coronado, and along the way inspired a new way to reach out to students for school events: social media.

“Cancer affects us all. I can’t think of a better way to raise money, hype up school spirit, and outreach to our students. It was a great experience, and I hope the tradition continues in years to come,” declares team member Isaac Zaehler.