When Bruce Parkhill began the Penn State chapter of Coaches Vs. Cancer back in 1995, he could not have fathomed what it would become:
“No, I had no clue. None.”
Back then, it was a fledgling organization without any big fundraising ideas, really. Just a lot of noble intentions. Since then, Jerry Dunn, Ed DeChellis and now Patrick Chambers have ramped it up to the point that it’s a real force for The American Cancer Society.
“Jerry took it and ran with it,” said Parkhill on Thursday from his Naples, Fla., home.
In fact, Dunn, Parkhill’s successor as Penn State basketball coach (1995-2003), helped usher in Penn State’s hugely successful CvC Golf Tournament in 1997.
“And since then, Eddie and Patrick have just done a great job,” said Parkhill.
With the help of ground-floor soldiers such as Elana Pyle, Steve Greer and the late Bob Perks, fundraising ideas were constantly being floated and implemented. DeChellis began the highly popular Reverse Car Drawing at Lubrano Park. He helped start the 501(c)(3) trust that made the chapter tax exempt. He was also integral in creating a board to locate deserving families whose day-to-day financial hardships had been created by a bread-winner’s cancer.
“That was the way we could distribute to people in need,” said DeChellis on Thursday from Annapolis, Md., where he’s been the Navy head coach since 2011. “We wanted to be able to get money straight to people in the community who really needed it.” The father who helped raise him in Monaca, Pa., died of cancer. DeChellis himself has beaten bladder cancer, diagnosed in 2004.
For his efforts, DeChellis was named CvC national Man of the Year in 2006.
And over the weekend at the Final Four in Minneapolis, current PSU coach Chambers was handed the American Cancer Society’s highest CvC fundraising honor – the Champion Award. That’s because he’s largely responsible for the PSU chapter’s raising of a staggering $1.3 million during the 8 years since his hiring in May 2011.
Among those college coaches who’ve received the award since the inaugural honor to Missouri’s Norm Stewart in 1996: Jim Boeheim, Denny Crum, Roy Williams, Gary Williams; Mark Few, Jim Calhoun, Tom Izzo, Lon Kruger; Bo Ryan and Bill Self.
“It was such an honor,” said Chambers of his award presentation on Sunday night in Minneapolis. “But knowing, Bruce, Jerry and Ed really started this thing; they were the pioneers that kept it on-task and on-mission.
“Now we have all these committees with great people who keep it all going. That’s allowed us to add more events.”
Chambers and his staff still put on the annual golf tournament, the 23rd of which will be May 30-31. They’ve added a Kentucky Derby event, Suits-n-Sneakers Week, a 3-point shooting challenge contest, a PSU coaches’ challenge and a campus 5K walk/run.
Chambers said he learned a lot from the Big 5 Coaches organization in Philadelphia when he was Jay Wright’s lead assistant at Villanova:
“I want to give credit to them, because I learned a lot going to those meetings and events, what the mission was and why those guys spent so much time on it. It made an impression.”
Without question, so have Chambers and Penn State.