LEBANON, Pa. — The Eastern Lebanon County girls basketball team is in the heart of their regular season schedule.
It's still one game at a time, but there's a match-up on Friday that carries extra meaning.
The Raiders will host Lampeter-Strasburg in their annual Gold Rush event that benefits Four Diamonds, but this season it's hitting close to home.
"For the girl's game, we are going to be dedicating this game to Abbie Keath, a former ELCO student-athlete, who has been fighting a battle with cancer. She just recently found out she's got to have some additional treatments," said ELCO head coach Ashli Shay.
Abbie graduated from ELCO in 2019 and is now a student-athlete at Lebanon Valley College, but her impact is still felt with those in and around ELCO athletics.
"She is the kid that you want on your team," added Shay. "You don't want to play against her. So, just being able to support her through this, and I will say that anyone that's played with her knows that she's a great teammate as well."
"Not only was I a part of the track team when she was, but she was also always very uplifting and supportive of everybody else," said senior point guard Emma Fox.
Those who didn't know Abbie directly, likely knew her family.
"Her Dad, Carl, was a longtime assistant coach here at ELCO, who resigned after last season, due to the circumstances," said Shay.
"I feel like supporting him and supporting his family is just a huge part of this whole situation," added Fox.
It's safe to say that there will be plenty of pink at Friday's Gold Rush game.
"We're kind of on a time crunch with supply chain issues and things like that with the t-shirts. So we really only had the online store open for about three or four days and we were able to sell over 300 shirts, which has been amazing," said Shay.
The Lanc-Leb League has a rich tradition of supporting one another, so Coach Shay says the best way to help is to come out to the game.
"There's also going to be, coordinated through the ELCO Raider THON, a bunch of events that are going to be going on through the course of the game on Friday, as well. And all the proceeds from that particular game are going to go directly to Abbie," said Shay.