University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Successful Breakfast Tips Off Season
October 2, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
Roy Williams began his 11th annual Fast Break Against Cancer breakfast on Friday morning with a simple goal: he wanted to break the $2 million mark in cumulative fundraising for the event.
On the floor of the Smith Center on Friday morning, the Carolina head coach turned to Jennifer Bowman, who coordinates the event for UNC Lineberger Cancer Center.
“Jennifer, have we reached $2 million yet?” Williams asked.
She replied that it was close.
“Well, then let's don't let anyone leave until we get there,” he said.
That's how strongly Williams feels about the breakfast, which he began during his second year as head coach in Chapel Hill. Ninety percent of the money raised goes to UNC Lineberger, with the other ten percent earmarked for the American Cancer Society.
Every year, Williams reminds attendees that they either have been touched or will be touched by cancer. The head coach knows that better than anyone—he lost one of his best friends, Ted Seagroves, to pancreatic cancer in December of 2014.
Williams invites a keynote speaker each year; past speakers have included Mia Hamm, Bill Cowher and Brad Daugherty. This year's guest was BYU head coach Dave Rose, a pancreatic cancer survivor who delivered a powerful message about what he's learned—be more kind, and find a way to enjoy the time we all have left remaining—since being diagnosed in 2009.
As always, the event concluded with a live auction. It's a mark of how much the event means to Williams that he seems to find a unique item to include each year. Several years ago, he began doing something he believed he'd never do: auctioning a seat on the Tar Heel bench for a designated game each season. Winners get to join Tar Heel huddles and be part of the locker room experience in addition to sitting on the bench during the game. When the item drew a winning bid of $25,000 when it was originally auctioned, Dean Smith approached Williams.
“At that price, why didn't you do a seat on the bench for every game?” Smith asked him.
“Coach, you would've never done it for any game!” Williams replied.
The notoriously private Smith had to agree that his former protégé was correct, but Williams wanted his signature fundraising event to include singular items. Last year, he added a new opportunity: a Smith Center sleepover for a few lucky kids, which was almost as wildly popular as the seat on the bench, and prompted frenetic bidding among those in attendance with very fortunate kids and grandkids.
The sleepover was once again on the auction list this year (eventual price tag: $4,500, and when the bidding got heavy Williams offered two of the sleepovers to double the fundraising), but the centerpiece item was an office chair once used at Carmichael Auditorium by Dean Smith.
The chair, featuring gorgeous Carolina blue leather, has been in Carmichael ever since the men's program relocated to the Smith Center. Bidding began at $1,000 and quickly went past $5,000 under the direction of event emcee Jones Angell.
The eventual winning bidder was Dr. Mark Graham, a former oncologist at UNC Lineberger who is now in private practice. Graham also treated former NC State women's head coach Kay Yow, and told the crowd he plans to keep the chair in his treatment room for those receiving chemotherapy, as a tribute both to Smith and to Yow's grace in her own battle with cancer.
Final Fast Break totals are still being tallied, but with the first practice of the men's basketball season this afternoon at 3:30, Williams can thankfully turn his attention to his 2015-16 team. His 2015 breakfast raised over $200,000, pushing his 11-year fundraising total to the coveted $2 million mark.
