KICKS Tourney fights cancer
By Jason Cohn
Santa Clara women's soccer team will be kicking off their spring season by participating in the 10th Annual KICKS Against Breast Cancer Tournament at Stanford University this Saturday.
The tournament, established by tournament director Louise Waxler, is held in memory of her close friend Claudia Mayer, a 47-year-old woman who died in 1996 after fighting breast cancer for two years.
Waxler, vice president of the National Soccer Coaches Association of America, started the tournament in Maryland to raise money for the Howard County General Hospital's Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource and Image Center at Columbia University, as well as to offer free mammography screenings provided by Georgetown's Lombardi Cancer Center for women who lack health insurance.
In the past nine years since the creation of the event, teams participating in the tournament have raised over $350,000, while additional fundraising from businesses and private donors has brought the total to more than $600,000.
Santa Clara will be competing against five of the top women's soccer teams in Northern California, including Stanford, USF, Cal, San Jose State and the Sacramento Storm of the Women's Premier Soccer League.
This will be the inaugural KICKS Tournament held on the West Coast, providing the first opportunity for the competitive western teams to compete against each other while also raising money for Stanford University Breast Cancer Research, the Community Breast Health Project and the Claudia Mayer Foundation. Each team is challenged to raise $1,000 through fundraising outside the tournament. Santa Clara's team has been selling pink "awareness" bracelets for $2 leading up to the tournament.
The theme of the tournament is "Help Save the Women You Love," whether it is through donations, buying a bracelet or simply purchasing a ticket to the tournament.
Stanford University, known for its outstanding cancer research and world-renowned physicians, aims at fighting breast cancer on three fronts -- prevention, diagnosis and effective treatment. The Community Breast Health Project aims at providing education along with financial and emotional support for victims of breast cancer and their families.
The Stanford Tournament will be the last of three tournaments played this month for the Claudia Mayer Foundation. In the past two weeks, the top men's and women's teams on the East Coast, including Penn State, Maryland, North Carolina, Duke, Georgetown and Boston College, along with the professional teams DC United and Washington Freedom, have played and raised over $40,000 thus far.
The finals for both the men's and women's tournaments in Maryland were televised on the Fox Soccer Channel and will be replayed throughout the month.
The tournament will begin at 9 a.m. on Stanford's New Maloney Field, pitting Santa Clara against rival San Jose State and Stanford against USF. The six teams participating in Saturday's tournament will be broken into two groups and will play a round robin to determine who will advance to the afternoon's semifinals. The championship and third-place games will start at 3:45 p.m.
Santa Clara beat San Jose State in two hard-fought meetings last season, but, if those two grudge matches are any indication of how these teams will play on Saturday, spectators should expect an extremely aggressive match.
Should the Broncos meet Stanford in the tournament, it will be another exciting match-up, as Santa Clara lost to Stanford last year in the regular season, though a rematch didn't materialize last year after Stanford was upset in the first round of the NCAA Tournament by St. Louis.
The tournament kicks off a month of spring scrimmages that Santa Clara will compete in to keep their level of play strong during the offseason. Two home matches highlight Santa Clara's spring schedule, including the Sacramento Storm match at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 6, and the Stanford game at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 25.
To contribute to charity and purchase an "awareness" bracelet, send a check for $3 to SCU Athletic Marketing, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053 or call (408) 551-1692.
To learn more about KICKS and the Claudia Mayer Foundation, visit www.kicksagainstbreastcanc.com.
Contact Jason Cohn at (408) 551-1918 or jrcohnstead@hotmail.com.