Bump, set, spike: 170 volleyball players came to the aid of children with cancer Saturday during the sixth annual For Our Kids Benefit Volleyball Tournament.
Held at Traverse City Central High School, the event raised $2,000 for the new pediatric oncology unit at Munson Medical Center. These funds will be used to purchase items including DVD players, DVDs and hand-held electronic games for patients to use during treatments that can take up to five or six hours.
Thirteen fun teams and four competitive teams duked it out for bragging rights, but all were there to help others in need.
"We just like to play and it's for a good cause," said Cathy Maddasion, a member of a recreational league, whose members fielded two teams at the tournament. "We did this last year but the football team beat us."
This year, the rec league players ruled as the final game was between the Century Chickens and the Havin' Fun team, with the Century Chickens winning a hard-fought battle.
"It's not bad for a bunch of old folks," said Dave Moore of the Century Chickens. "We just don't know any better."
Before facing each other, these two finalists had to first beat teams comprised of football players, members of the Student Senate or the school's Students Against Drunk Drivers chapter. Not to mention the United States Marines and future recruits.
Everyone played full out throughout the tournament, diving for saves and jumping for killer spikes. The competitive play among four teams in the small gym has been dubbed "nuclear volleyball."
"They're all very good but they still have fun," said organizer Pat Bowen, a secretary at the school.
Football team members - AKA the Tutu Crew, decked out on borrowed tutus -- played a swashbuckling game that took their Grand Traverse Bay Recycling Team to the quarterfinals. There, despite their youth and boundless energy, members of the Havin' Fun team twice their age knocked them out after three close games.
"It's been great volleyball, good competition but great fun," said Josh Tooken, a senior at Central High School who plays football and track. "Volleyball is more about control than it is about strength - if you hit it too hard it shoots off everywhere and goes out of bounds."
"It's friendly competition for a good cause," he added of the tournament.
The event also featured a silent auction with everything from sports equipment, clothing and games to books, a leather coat and original art.
"A lot of the people we went to have done it in recent years so they were very generous," said Megan Stratton, a senior at the school who is president of the SADD chapter and helped organize the tournament for the past three years.
Bowen and former police liaison for the school, Dennis Padgett, founded the For Our Kids Foundation in 2000 as a way to help families and children in need. They decided to use an annual volleyball tournament as the means, an idea sparked by the first year's benefit for the family of Erin Lockman. A volleyball player at Central, Lockman battled leukemia her senior year. The fundraiser helped her family defray medical and living expenses not covered by insurance.
In the six years since it began, the foundation has raised nearly $20,000 to help families with children who are impacted by illness or an accident.
For more information on the For Our Kids Foundation, contact Bowen at 933-3540.