Riverside Secondary's Tessa Burton models the Rapids' all-pink jersey which the team will wear Tuesday through Friday at its 15th annual A Tournament For Emily cancer awareness fund-raiser and basketball tournament at the Port Coquitlam school. (Photo courtesy Riverside Athletics)
Feature High School Girls Basketball

Riverside girls to wear all-pink jerseys at A Tournament For Emily! Says Rapids’ Tessa Burton: “…I think it makes a big statement”

PORT COQUITLAM — For Tessa Burton, there was nothing ordinary about getting a chance to don her basketball team’s newest game-day jersey and shorts.

“It’s really bright, bright pink,” the senior guard with Port Coquitlam’s Riverside Rapids told VarsityLetters.ca on Monday afternoon, one day before the opening tip-off of the 15th annual A Tournament For Emily.

“I think it makes a big statement,” continued Burton who like so many, has had cancer touch her family. “I think it will be awesome and empowering because we’re all banding together for the fight against cancer.”

Named in memory of Emily Inglis, who lost her life to the disease at age 12, before she could enrol at Riverside, A Tournament For Emily has raised and donated thousands upon thousands of dollars to B.C. Children’s Hospital, focusing most recently on a partnership with Fishermen Helping Kids With Cancer to ‘distract and generally improve the days’ of those kids on the oncology floor at Children’s.

To that end, Burton and her Rapids teammates will don their pink togs en masse for the first time as a team Thursday evening, and emerge from their locker room in time for the tourney’s Day 1 finale, a 7 p.m. rematch of last Saturday’s TBI championship finale, as they play host to Langley’s Walnut Grove Gators.

Riverside Rapids’ guard Tessa Burton and the rest of her teammates are doing what they can to make a statement in the fight against cancer. (Photo courtesy Riverside athletics)

“You just want the kids to have awareness,” says Riverside head coach and A Tournament for Emily founder Paul Langford. “You want them to know that they can make a difference. When somebody has a bad stroke of luck, and they have to go into Children’s Hospital, there are things we can do to help them not feel so alone, to let them know that people want to help them, and that they have support.”

Langford came up with the ideal of all-pink jerseys for The Emily last summer.

“I had to get a white set and a green set,” Langford said the program’s home and road togs. “I’d always had an idea for pink, so I asked him ‘What about a third set? Can you do all-pink?’”

Adds Burton: “This is something you don’t see every day, but it’s not just the (colour of the) jersey, it’s the story behind it.”

A TOURNAMENT FOR EMILY

(all games at PoCo’s Riverside Secondary)

TUESDAY

3:30 p.m. — Argyle vs. Robert Bateman

5:15 p.m. — Brookswood vs. Langley Christian

7 p.m. — Walnut Grove vs. Riverside

WEDNESDAY

3:30 p.m. — Langley Christian vs McMath

5:15 p.m. — Walnut Grove vs. Brookswood

7 p.m — Argyle vs. Riverside

THURSDAY

3:30 p.m. — Argyle vs. Langley Christian

5:15 p.m. — Walnut Grove vs. R.A. Mcmath

7 p.m. — Robert Bateman vs. Riverside

FRIDAY

3:30 p.m. — Riverside vs. R.A. McMath

5:15 p.m. — Brookswood vs. Robert Bateman

(note — Junior varsity games tip-off at 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Thursday and Friday)

If you’re reading this story or viewing these photos on any website other than one belonging to a university athletic department, it has been taken without appropriate permission. In these challenging times, true journalism will survive only through your dedicated support and loyalty. VarsityLetters.ca and all of its exclusive content has been created to serve B.C.’s high school and university sports community with hard work, integrity and respect. Feel free to drop us a line any time at howardtsumura@gmail.com.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *