This past summer, Rick Dunetz was sitting down, sifting through donations during the Grass Doubles Tournament when he came across a name that caught his eye: Russ Rose.
The donation laid the foundation for future contacts with the Penn State women's volleyball team.
Dunetz is the CEO and founder of the Side-Out Foundation and Dig Pink, organizations that use college and high school volleyball to earn money to help therapies and molecular profiling for cancer research.
The Penn State women's volleyball team joins the cause with its own Dig Pink match against Michigan State at 7 Saturday night in Rec Hall. It will be one of hundreds of matches to be played across the country this fall
to help raise money for cancer research.
"I exploded when we got an e-mail from Penn State," Dunetz said. "I was floored. [Thought] it will be great if we get 100 teams. Wow, this is unbelievable."
Dunetz and Penn State finalized their plans for joining the event after he talked with assistant coach Salima Rockwell. He explained that his organization is different from others in that his is a fundraising organization that redistributes funds with its own advisory group and not through another large charity.
Both players and coaches are excited about this weekend's match, with some for personal reasons. Sophomore defensive specialist Cathy Quilico's mother, Theresa Quilico, is a six-year cancer survivor, and she and her daughter often volunteer to help cancer-fighting causes, including run-walk events.
Christa Harmotto, whose grandmother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, also said being a women's team makes it more of an honor to help with the event.
Last year, the Nittany Lions (15-0, 3-0 Big Ten) wore pink warm-up shirts before a match. This year, Harmotto and Rose talked about some players wearing shoes with some pink in them or pink laces. Rose said if the team wore shoes, it would autograph
them and auction them off to help Dig Pink.
After having what he called "nice confined little boxes" of what teams could do to promote the event, Dunetz and the foundation eventually decided to allow each school and team to make its own event however it wanted it to be. Some high schools will be bringing their bands and some college teams may be wearing pink jerseys.
"Everybody's been touched by cancer," Rose said. "Any opportunity that we can do to bring some awareness to assist in fundraising aspect, I'm in favor of participation. I'm sure that none of us ever do enough."
Using market research and comparing this fundraising event to similar ones in the past, Dunetz said the fundraising goal is $5,000 for the match and $350,000 for the hundreds of teams involved.
Dunetz also said these matches usually see teams play with more effort.
The Dig Pink cause has inspired teams to play well even against stronger teams, although Dunetz joked he didn't think Penn State would be too happy if Michigan State came in and "out-dueled" them.
But winning the match isn't everything this weekend. Junior Kelsey Ream said more people will come out than previous weekends because of the fundraising cause.
"I'm excited," Cathy Quilico said. "What girl doesn't like to wear pink, you know?"
