The Iowa Coaches vs. Cancer Initiative held a gala where all four Division I men’s basketball coaches in Iowa attended: Drake’s Darian DeVries, Iowa’s Fran McCaffery, Iowa State’s Steve Prohm and Northern Iowa’s Ben Jacobson.

Wednesday’s gala was that originally scheduled for May, but was postponed due to COVID-19, capped off an auction that raised over $230,000.

During the two-hour gala, the coaches talked about why they are involved in the cause and their personal experiences with cancer.

Jacobson, who has been a part of the gala for all 13 years, talked about the importance of the event and the cause.

“It’s been great having been a part of it for 13 years, it all started with Dale Howard and his vision,” Jacobson said. “Dale and Marilyn [Howard] have shown their commitment, their passion for Coaches versus Cancer and wanting to do everything that they can to not only help from their standpoint but inspire others to join the effort.”

Dale was the Iowa chairman for Coaches versus Cancer before his death due to cancer on January 30, 2015, at the age of 81.

Jacobson said Scott Howard, son of Dale and Marilyn, is going to donate $5,000 to the American Cancer Society for each Iowa team that makes the NCAA Tournament. If all four teams make it he’ll donate $25,000. 

Scott is the manager of player personnel for the NBA’s Denver Nuggets.

Jacobson said after Dale started the effort, the Iowa Coaches vs. Cancer organization has raised over $4.5 million over the past 13 years. 

Iowa Head Coach Fran McCaffery said he has been involved with Coaches vs Cancer efforts for 18 years and when he got the job at Iowa 10 years ago, Dale was one of the first people he met.

McCaffery opened up about his family’s experience with cancer. 

“I lost both my parents to cancer and my son, Patrick, came down with cancer,” McCaffery said. “We got to see this up close and personal when Patrick got sick. You finally see what’s available when you or someone in your family becomes sick. Where do we go? What’s the game plan? When you’re on the other side of it, you recognize just how important it was for the Howard family to get this thing going and for us to participate.”

Patrick was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 14. He defeated the cancer, was a top 100 recruit in the nation coming out of high school and is currently a sophomore on the Iowa team.

Fran is on the national council for Coaches vs. Cancer and his wife, Margaret, is on the national board of the American Cancer Society.

Prohm said the state’s event is unique and everybody is affected by cancer differently.

“It’s very unique, I don’t think every state is able to bring four coaches together for a golf tournament in the fall, a gala, which is usually in May, to bring awareness and help raise funds for hopefully one day, a cure for all types of cancer,” Prohm said. 

He also stated the importance of coaches using their platforms for things like this.

“This kind of makes you reevaluate why you coach,” Prohm said. “The wins and losses are what you’re judged by but I think we realize, I know I have internally, is who am I impacting? COVID-19, are you helping in that area? Social issues? What kind of change are you helping for your players and our next generation and with cancer, with all of this, it doesn’t stop. All four of us have great platforms and we all need to come together like we did tonight to help bring change in all those different areas.”

DeVries reiterated the panel’s statements and talked about the importance of organizations like Coaches vs. Cancer around the country.

“The success stories are what you want to focus on now because there are success stories where people do survive and they do go on and it’s because of the impact that organizations like this have throughout the country and particularly in our state,” DeVries said. “People in our state have really rallied around people as they go through this [cancer] and it’s touched everybody in one way, shape or form. It doesn’t pick and choose, it impacts all of us and I’ve had very close family members who’ve had cancer and survived, but I’ve had grandparents who didn’t make it. So it is something that impacts us all, it’s important to all of us and hopefully there is a cure out there someday that we can continue to come up with as we continue to push forward.”

There were plenty of items in this year’s auction, which closed at 9 p.m. Monday. 

Items included gear and promotions from each of the four universities and from the Triple-A baseball team, the Iowa Cubs.

The auction’s last updated donation total said $236,520.

Four of the plethora of items included a “Day Away From Cancer” package.

The Day Away From Cancer is an event where four pediatric patients who are suffering from cancer get the opportunity to spend a day with one of the four men’s basketball teams in the state (one from each school).

Each of the patients were selected after somebody won the auction for one out of the four slots and chose them and their families to get to attend the games and interact with the team (either Drake, Iowa, Iowa State or Northern Iowa). 

In the hour and a half livestream of the gala, the four patients that were selected for last year’s Day Away From Cancer event talked about their positive experiences at the games they went to. 

The items included in one of the Day Away From Cancer packages “include four game day tickets, a locker room visit, the opportunity to sit on the bench during early pre-game warm ups as well as attend the game day shoot around or day before practice and an autographed jersey,” according to the gala’s website.

The full livestream of the 2020 gala can be found here.

The 2021 Coaches vs. Cancer Gala is set for May 7 in Des Moines, Iowa.