Annual high school memorial basketball tournament marks 10th year in support of Stollery

A charity basketball tournament that supports the Stollery Children's Hospital is celebrating its 10 year anniversary.

An annual high school basketball tournament supporting Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital is marking its 10th anniversary this weekend.

Archbishop MacDonald Catholic High School is hosting the David Adomako-Ansah Memorial Basketball Tournament Friday and Saturday.

Sixteen teams, eight for both senior boys and girls, from schools in Edmonton, Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray and Rocky Mountain House are taking part in the games being staged at the west-central school and the neighbouring Edmonton Christian High School.

Money raised from the tournament supports the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation. The tourney is held in memory of Adomako-Ansah, a former MacDonald student who died in 2013, aged 23, due to complications from lupus, an autoimmune disease with which he was diagnosed as a teenager that attacks a body’s healthy cells and tissue.

After high school, Adomako-Anash took the radio and television arts program at the North Alberta Institute of Technology and interned at CTV News Edmonton.

He started a foundation to raise money for the Stollery, where he received treatment until he was 19, holding several events including basketball tournaments, barbecues and pub crawls in support of it.

Jacob Verhesen, Archbishop MacDonald’s athletic director and a physical education teacher, said that, in the week leading up to the tournament, students watch a video about Adomako-Ansah and his legacy. The school also has a scholarship in his name that Grade 12 students for which can apply.

“We do all that leading up (to the tournament), and we ask our students to bring in money throughout the week in support of the Sollery,” Verhesen told CTV News Edmonton on Friday.

“We’ve brought in over $2,000 every year just from our students. All of our gate entry charges. We have five or six big sponsors this year that are supporting the tournament, and a lot of that money, in addition to helping the tournament, goes right back to the Stollery.”

The Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation has an online tournament donation site.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Kimberly Wynn