It’s been 30 years since Penn State men’s basketball’s then-head coach Bruce Parkhill introduced the State College community to a relatively new collaboration between the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches: the Coaches vs. Cancer initiative.
Parkhill’s friend, Jim Satalin, former head basketball coach at St. Bonaventure and Duquesne universities, had been tapped to serve as executive director of the program.
“He called me and explained what CVC was all about and wondered if Penn State would have an interest in it. I said, ‘Absolutely,’” Parkhill recalls.
Little could Parkhill have envisioned that one simple phone call could have kicked off an organization that would evolve to host several beloved annual events; attract the enthusiastic participation of businesses, community members, coaches, and letter winners from a wide variety of sports; spawn three local “spin-off” charities; and, most importantly, raise over $4.3 million for cancer research, prevention, and support services since 1995.
From 3-pointers to 18-holers
The national CVC program was formed in 1993, inspired by Norm Stewart, former head coach of the University of Missouri men’s basketball program and a cancer survivor, who challenged fans to donate money to the ACS every time his team made a 3-point shot.
It was this concept that Parkhill brought to the officers of the Penn State Hoops Club, the official booster club for the men’s basketball team, in 1995.
Together with other Hoops Club members, those officers — Bob Perks, Steve Greer, Frank Welsh, and Elana Pyle — led the Penn State team to raise $16,000 for ACS during that first season.
When Jerry Dunn took over as head coach upon Parkhill’s retirement the following season, he wanted to take the effort further.
“I think both Bruce and Jerry, being as competitive as they were, wanted to put Penn State on the map and become one of the top CVC groups in the nation. But to do that we had to get bigger,” says Greer.
Dunn came to the Hoops Club and asked them to consider hosting a golf tournament to raise more money.
“I looked at Jerry and said, ‘Have you ever run a golf outing?’” says Greer with a chuckle. “None of us had ever run a tournament before, and we were a small group.”
Despite the lack of experience, the group successfully put together the first official golf outing in 1997, raising $28,000, and the Penn State Coaches vs. Cancer Golf Tournament was born.
Today, a formal committee has replaced the role of the Hoops Club, and the annual golf tournament has become Penn State CVC’s largest fundraiser, drawing as many as 350 golfers each year and raising $2.8 million since its inception. The scramble takes place at the Penn State Golf Courses on the Friday following Memorial Day (May 30 this year). Teams of four are assigned a “captain” as a fifth player — usually a current or former Penn State coach or an alumni athlete.
‘Party With a Purpose’
A major part of the event begins the night before the golfers even hit the links. On that Thursday evening, the Coaches/Sponsors Reception is held at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. The event has become known for its sophisticated butlered food service, open bar, live entertainment, silent auction, and festive atmosphere.
“This isn’t your average golf tournament and it isn’t your average reception,” says Wendy Pelky, who currently leads the Penn State CVC committee along with co-directors Michael Martin and Scott Walker. “I can remember both Steve [Greer] and [Coach] Ed DeChellis saying emphatically that we were not going to cut corners and that we want to make it the highest-class event in town. I think that really set us apart and gave us the trajectory to make it as big as it became.”
Greer gives a lot of the credit for that trajectory to the late Dan Rallis, who not only provided the mouth-watering hors d’oeuvres for the reception through his business, Catering with Style, but also had the initial vision for making it a can’t-miss event.
“His vision was always ‘Party With a Purpose.’ Let’s throw a party so big and so good that people would leave saying they had wonderful food and drink, good camaraderie, and that they’d be coming back next year,” Greer says.
Rallis was also the brains behind the CVC’s fall signature event, the Reverse Car Drawing, also held at Medlar Field and including many of the features of the golf tournament reception, with the added element of a raffle for a unique car, which one lucky attendee was guaranteed to win at the end of the night. Rallis would also throw in some extra entertainment, like fireworks or a performance by the Penn State Blue Band, Greer says. The first Reverse Car Drawing to benefit Penn State CVC was held in 2006; the last one was held in 2023 following the death of Rallis. Pelky says the committee is hoping to bring the event back this fall.
In 2019, Penn State CVC brought the Race Day Soirée under its umbrella. The event, which is held in conjunction with the Kentucky Derby at the Boalsburg home of Blake and Linda Gall, began in 2011 and has raised over $690,000 for the American Cancer Society. The event is held outdoors in a large tent and features a viewing of the Kentucky Derby, live music, Derby hat contests, horse race betting, horse-drawn carriage rides, bourbon tasting, and more. This year’s Race Day Soirée takes place on May 3.
It’s Personal
As the current head coach of Penn State basketball, Mike Rhoades serves as host of the golf tournament. In addition to attending the Thursday night reception, he says you can find him riding around in a golf cart and greeting golfers during the outing on Friday.
He finds the cause meaningful, he says, because, “Cancer has affected all of our lives. … I don’t care who you are — all of us are impacted by it in some way.”
To his point, several key figures in CVC’s early success ironically went on to fight battles of their own with the disease.
The Rallis family got heavily involved with Penn State CVC in 2001, following the death of Dan’s brother, Jim Rallis, from cancer. In 2013, Dan’s son, Chris Rallis, fought his own battle with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, for a year before beating it. Dan’s mother, Polly Rallis, passed away from cancer in 2016, and Dan himself succumbed to the disease in 2023.
Steve Greer, who served on the committee and as director of Penn State CVC for many years, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2008. He underwent treatment for almost seven years before putting it behind him.
Bob Perks, Penn State CVC’s first director, passed away from melanoma at the age of 42 in 2005. The following year, his wife, Doreen Perks, founded the Bob Perks Cancer Assistance Fund to assist local cancer patients who need help with living expenses while they are undergoing treatment. To date, that fund has allocated over $3 million to families in Centre, Blair, Clearfield, Huntingdon, Juniata, and Mifflin counties, expanding into Bedford County this year.
Before the Bob Perks Fund was established, all the money raised by Penn State CVC went directly to the American Cancer Society. Greer always felt strongly that some of the money should remain local, and he recalls a lunch meeting at the American Ale House in which he and then-head coach Ed DeChellis (also a cancer survivor) convinced the American Cancer Society to permit 25% of Penn State CVC proceeds to be allocated locally through a grant to the Bob Perks Fund — an arrangement that continues to this day.
In 2011, Greer and Rallis also joined forces with BMX athlete Jamie Bestwick to form the Bestwick Foundation as another vehicle to help local families struggling with cancer and other hardships. For several years, the Bestwick Foundation was the sole beneficiary of the Reverse Car Drawing. Greer says the foundation has folded since Rallis’s death.
The Team Ream Foundation is another charity with a similar mission that came out of Penn State CVC. It began informally when current Penn State CVC co-director Mike Martin created Team Ream t-shirts for people to wear during a CVC 5K race in support of his friend, Brandon Ream, as he was fighting cancer.
Ream passed away in 2013, and the Team Ream Foundation was founded the following year in his honor. The foundation helps financially disadvantaged residents fighting cancer or other serious illnesses.
Today, Martin says, “The Ream family makes sure they are here every year for the golf tournament; his father, Gary, flies in from halfway across the world to be here for it.”
The same is true of many past participants.
“The golf tournament is a coming home of sorts. It’s like a second Christmas; it’s when the family returns home, only it’s the Penn State family,” says Pelky.
Parkhill, who has been there since the very beginning, is one of those family members who returns each year.
“It’s been really fun to see it grow and become what I think is a source of pride, not just for Penn State but for our community,” he says. “It’s become one of the best CVC chapters in the country.”
Part of something bigger
There are 47 collegiate CVC chapters, and Martin points out that many of them are made up of teams from several schools.
“The Penn State chapter is pretty unique because we’re just made up of one school, one community,” he says.
Pelky adds, “The chapter’s been well-recognized nationally. There used to be rankings, and we were consistently in the top five of chapters in the U.S. Coach DeChellis and Coach Chambers were both given national awards through CVC.” DeChellis was named CVC’s Man of the Year in 2006, and Chambers was presented with the Champion Award in 2019.
Rhoades, who became Penn State’s coach in 2023, says he’d been exposed to other CVC efforts in his prior coaching positions, “but nothing to this magnitude. … It’s bigger than I think anyone ever thought it would be because of the people involved and their big hearts.”
The co-directors are quick to give credit to the local businesses who sponsor Penn State CVC, many of them participating through both financial and in-person involvement.
“The sponsor support we have had is a huge part of our success,” says Scott Walker, co-director.
Of course, success also comes from the hard work of the 25-person committee and the three co-directors, who pour countless hours into the work of fundraising or planning and coordinating events.
“It’s like a second job,” Pelky says, but motivation comes from “constantly reminding ourselves why we’re here. Cancer doesn’t stop, so we can’t stop.” T&G
Karen Walker is a freelance writer in State College.
