HOOPS FOR HEALING HISTORY
HOOPS FOR HEALING Basketball Tournament was started in 2001 by Doug Smith the Athletic Director then at Woodstock HS and Tom Gillhouse then the Athletic Director at Belvidere HS. Their main purpose was to raise awareness and funds for cancer research.
They co-hosted a Thanksgiving Varsity Boys Basketball Tournament in conjunction with the Gavers Cancer Foundation. The talent of the young men participating in this tournament helped raise funds for Centegra Hospital in Woodstock, Order of St.Francis in Belvidere and Rush Presbyterian in Chicago.
This tournament still exists today and has raised over $110,000 for cancer research. The schools that have competed in the Woodstock Hoops for Healing Tournament include:
Rockford Auburn, Belvidere, Cary-Grove, DeKalb, Rockford Harlem, McHenry, Crystal Lake (Prairie Ridge), Sydney,Australia , Woodstock, Hoffman Estates, Rockford Jefferson and Algonquin (Jacobs).
Doug Smith brought this idea when he moved to Naperville North and teamed up with Craig Watson the Athletic Director at Oswego to do the same thing in 2005. In their first year the tournament raised over $6,000 for cancer research at Edward Cancer Center in Naperville. They expanded the tournament by including not only Varsity but a sophomore tournament as well. To date this tournament has raised over $190,000. Funds raised from the Hoops for Healing tournament hosted by Naperville-North and Oswego go now to support Camp Hope. Combined both tournaments have raised over $300,000 for cancer in one way or another. (See attachment on Camp Hope)
Yearly they bring in cancer survivors to speak to the teams about their personal fight with cancer and what a tournament like this means to them and others going through the same battle. All teams wear the same shooting shirts and coaches wear the same coaching shirts to show the main purpose of this tournament is raising funds to fight cancer. This has turned out to be a great community service project for our athletes to be able to use their athletic abilities to fight this dreadful disease.
Teams involved in the Oswego-Naperville North Hoops for Healing Tournament have included: Aurora Christian, Aurora Marmion, Benet, DeKalb, Geneva, Oswego, Oswego East, Naperville Central, Naperville North, Illinois Math and Science, Chicago DeLasalle, Chicago Foreman, Chicago Prosser, Metea Valley, Minooka, Neuqua Valley, Proviso East, Waubonsie Valley, Walter Payton College Prep, Yorkville, Huntley, Waukegan and West Chicago. This year there will be 16 different communities and 24 different teams participating during Thanksgiving in a Hoops for Healing Basketball Tournament. While they will all play to win, their main goal is to raise money for CAMP HOPE.
We hope you will join us and become a sponsor of this tournament. All sponsorship money goes directly to sponsor CAMP HOPE.
Darren Howard – AD – Oswego HS Doug Smith – Tournament Co-Founder
Bob Quinn – AD – Naperville North HS