Location: Branford High School
Coordinator: Dave Maloney, Branford girls' basketball coach

The day will eventually come when the initiative to stop cancer moves more assertively than the disease. There are many in the country who believe that, who devote themselves to ensure it happens.

Thursday at Branford High School, the grassroots effort that generates the dollars that aids the scientists who discover the medicines that will someday defeat cancer was in enthusiastic bloom in a hot gym on a busy school night.

There were Branford students and teachers. Town and school officials. Parents and grandparents. Firemen and policemen. Personalities from WTNH-8 in New Haven played ball.

The town bought admission tickets and filled the gym, then it bought raffle tickets, played basketball, performed dance numbers and cheered. Then everyone left feeling like they had made a contribution to something important.

In just its second season, Geno's Cancer Team, the fund-raising engine founded by UConn women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma, and his wife, Kathy, is only beginning to find its stride.

This year, a collarborative effort with the CIAC, spearheaded by Auriemma's friend and former Branford High girls basketball coach and administrator, Dave Maloney, has brought the state's schools, at all levels, with a vast amount of ideas and resources, into the battle to beat the disease.

It's been an effort that has done more than raise nearly $40,000 for the charity. It's an effort that's raised consciousness, encouraged the feeling among students to feel greater obligation than entitlement.

"We have received great response to the cause," Maloney said Thursday. "We're elated to have schools across the state enbrace us the way they have."

For Maloney, the fight grew personal last year when he lost his wife, Debbie, a nurse at Branford's Tisko Elementary School, to cancer.

There with Maloney and the tireless Merle Kaplan, the manager of Geno's Cancer Team, was the boss himself.

Just hours after bringing his team to the state capitol for another reception, and before getting on a plane to Toronto for another function on Friday, Auriemma stood behind one of the baskets, greeted well-wishers, smiled, joked around, watched basketball and signed autographs.

As much as his six national championships mean to him, it is clear winning this competition may be even more significant to him.

"The intiative that we've seen, the response we've received, the events that have been run has been great," Auriemma said. 'And you know what? The amount of money that's raised isn't even the important thing right now. It's the involvement of the kids, their willingness to want to do things. The more things they want to do, the more this effort will grow.

"Look at this tonight, to have a full gym on a school night is wonderful. It's a lot of work, but we have a great committee, people that are committed to this. We just need to keep coming up with ideas, like what we're working on for next year by trying to incorporate Mother's Day and Father's Day into various functions."

Auriemma, lost his father to cancer a decade ago.