When people think about the month of October, the usual instinct is to focus on the excitement of a beloved holiday, Halloween. However, October is also a month to celebrate and promote many different aspects of human culture. One of the focuses is October being breast cancer awareness month. This year, DePaul Prep focused on Breast Cancer awareness, ready to help move our community to promote positive change through October being One DePaul Prep community in particular made an active effort to do so, the girls tennis team.
The girls tennis program was started three years ago by Nicole Kucera and Joseph Voss. This past June, Kucera was diagnosed with breast cancer. This extremely unfortunate situation came as a huge shock to the DePaul Prep community, especially for. Kucera’s athletes on the tennis team. Coach Kucera has been a safe haven for members of DePaul Prep’s community. Kucera continuously showed immense support for her students. She is more than beloved, which is part of the reason girl’s tennis and the entire community is so moved by this effort.
“Every student that she’s worked with, whether it be counseling or tennis, knows how much she brings to the table. She’s done so much for so many of the students here…it really hit home for a lot of people,” said Voss, co-founder of the girls tennis program and Assistance Principal of DePaul Prep. DePaul Prep’s community is brought together in difficult moments like this. Determined to show support for their beloved coach, the girls and coaches on the team decided to dedicate the tennis season to Ms. Kucera, as it aligned with October’s breast cancer awareness month.
With this in consideration, the team decided to host a breast cancer awareness match on October 2nd against Loyola Academy, the highschool Kucera graduated from. At this match, one of the player’s parents had the idea of creating pink shirts for the players to wear. The team devotion to this inspired the players to continue to wear their pink shirts for multiple more games to come. Many members of the team reflect on the experience with a positive outlook.
“It brought our team together,” says junior girls tennis player, Kaila Angeles. “It felt great raising awareness for someone we love.” The tennis team was brought together in support of their cause, implementing an even deeper positive impact to the movement.
The girls tennis team even went so far as to include the whole school in this effort. Girls tennis joined forces with Young Women’s leadership club and Women in STEM to sell and distribute pink T-Shirts and other breast cancer awareness merchandise. The proceeds will benefit breast cancer research and awareness. The movement had major support, with both students and faculty members purchasing T-Shirts to wear on Friday, October 27th.
“I feel like our student body has been really brought together. Sometimes we struggle to unite as a school, but it’s very clear how important this is to us,” says Terrance Fabianski, a junior at DePaul Prep. As DePaul Prep strives to raise awareness for multiple aspects and unite identities school-wide, it is clear that DePaul Prep will continue to implement new ways to raise awareness.
