Pickerington Central playing for fan with cancer
PICKERINGTON — The accommodations would be first class and the opponents would be as good as they get, but Pickerington Central senior forward Kyla Whitehead was not thrilled about spending the final Christmas break of her high school years in Wilmington, Delaware.
The season before, the Tigers packed lightly going to warm, sunny Naples, Florida.
“At first, we didn’t want to go from one cold place to another,” she said.
The Diamond State Classic turned out to be the best life lesson ever, and not because the Tigers won the championship.
The lasting triumph from the trip is a relationship with a sick 9-year-old boy they had known for only 72 hours. Danny Feltwell even took the tournament trophy home with him to Margate, New Jersey, and none of the players objected.
Danny is partly the reason Pickerington Central (26-2) has reached a Division I state semifinal against Mason (24-3) on Friday at Value City Arena.
“We’ve been invited to play everywhere over Christmas break, but I chose that Diamond State Classic because we wanted to affect a kid’s life,” coach Johnathan Hedgepeth said. “Each team adopts a child, and ours was Danny Feltwell.”
Feltwell, who is from Margate, has fought T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma since he was 27 months old. He ate pizza with the team, sat on the team bench, drew up several plays during timeouts and celebrated on the court after Maliya Perry made a three-pointer as time expired for a victory.
But father Dan Feltwell noticed that Danny’s face was swollen and flushed and had him hospitalized that night. Tests revealed a tumor twice the size of his heart on his heart and bronchial tubes after he had been cancer-free for four years and eight months.
The Tigers visited him in the hospital every day. They haven’t stopped communicating through Facebook, phone calls and texts.
“Our theme has been, ‘Do it for Danny,’ ” Hedgepeth said. “Danny brought us closer. We called him before our regional final and told him that we were going to win it for him.”
Danny watched online as Pickerington Central came from behind to defeat Westerville South 60-52 to get to the final four.
A Tigers jersey No. 23, Danny’s favorite number, will hang in the locker room Friday night. Whitehead, as usual, will write #Danny on one wrist.
“Danny kisses that trophy before he goes to bed every night,” Dan Feltwell said. “When he has a bad day, he just hugs that basketball the girls gave him. Those girls are beautiful people. Danny tells them, ‘I believe in you.’”
Perry said Danny has changed the Tigers.
“That tournament made us realize that it is about more than basketball after seeing that little boy fight for his life every day,” she said. “We want to make a little difference and give him a memorable experience.”
The trophy remained with Feltwell. A duplicate recently was shipped to Pickerington Central.
The Feltwells wanted to fly to Columbus for the state tournament, but despite being in remission Danny will begin pre-bone marrow transplant treatment Tuesday. There will be five days of chemotherapy and three days of double treatment, fullbody radiation. Danny will have a bone marrow transplant March 27.
Whitehead will be thinking of him.
“We got to Delaware and it was an immediate change in our attitudes,” she said. “Danny is going through so much — more than any of us probably will go through in our lifetimes. He has been an inspiration to us. He has made us stronger people.”