Ellen Toy is more than a coach to me; she is someone who I admire. I remember when I first met her in 7^th grade volleyball, I was scared of her. I did everything that I could to not mess up in front of her. Once I got a chance to talk to her during practice, I found out that I had no reason to be scared.
 She was such a nice person and she truly loved coaching volleyball. During 7^th and 8^th grade, my team practiced with her often. I got to know her better throughout my season, and she inspired me to try out for the high school JV team. Believe it or not, I made the high school JV team as a freshman. Ellen was the coach for varsity, so I was not one of her players yet. At the PITT Summer Volleyball Camp my sophomore year, I was practicing with JV and I heard Ellen say, “Rach, come over here and play.” When she said those six words, I immediately ran over to her with a smile on my face. I was finally on varsity with Ellen as my coach.

            Ellen was diagnosed in October 2010 with Signet Ring Cancer, also known as Gastric Cancer. Signet Ring Cancer does not manifest itself in large tumors; it destroys tissue at the cellular level. She fought her hardest to try and beat the cancer, and that made her admirable to me. Ellen is honestly the strongest woman I have ever met. Soon after she defeated her cancer, Jaime Moran, my other coach, was diagnosed for the third time with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. The whole time Jaime was battling her cancer, Ellen was not only there for Jaime, but for the whole volleyball team. When Ellen told us that Jaime’s days were numbered, everyone was crying and upset. Ellen was there hugging each and every one of us and telling us that it was going to be okay. When my bestfriend Jenna Prusia died in December, Ellen was once again the rock for the whole team. She opened her front door for anyone who simply wanted to talk, cry or needed a place to go. On February 25, 2013, Ellen told us that her cancer had returned. She is going to have to go through the battle again, but she is ready to fight. She is unbreakable. I admire her honesty, braveness, courage, strength, beauty, and her love for everyone in her life. I feel blessed to have Ellen Toy in my life and as my volleyball coach.

By: Rachel Frye

Written: March 19^th, 2013

After I finished "There's Nothing in The Coaches Manual", I was really prepared to move forward, maybe do a few more "Guest Blogger" spots and write something positive about what we've been through.  It was time.  Our team has been surrounded by sadness for far to long.  Ellen and I talked about how we needed to find positive forces and images to help all of us back onto the court.

One of the ideas we came up with was a "celebration song" kind of like "Sweet Caroline" after the third quarter at Pitt games.  We felt like, win or lose, this coming season we needed to recognize the one important lesson we came away with was everyday is a gift that deserves celebration!  

The next thing to do was...

Find a song.

I had a few in mind.  Much of the new music I have been listening to has a kind of pepped up, folksy, Irish rock sort of feel.  The kind of song you might learn the chorus too.  The song that makes you at least tap your foot, and at most stomp your feet.  Lots of songs fit this, many were considered, then ONE stood out.

The Goo Goo Dolls new song, "Rebel Beat"

The song has that catchy beat, but what really struck us we're the lyrics.

Like the Goo Goo's knew what we needed to hear.

We keep heading in the same direction
You become my own reflection
Is that your soul that you’re trying to protect
I always hoped that we would intersect, yeah

Give me time to cope and time to heal
Time to cry if it’s what you feel
Oh, life can hope, when it gets too real
I can hold you up when it’s hard to feel

Alive, alive
Alive is all I wanna feel
Tonight, tonight
I need to be where you are
I need to be where you are

Hey you, look around
Can you hear that noise, it’s a rebel sound
We got nowhere else to go

And when the sun goes down and we fill the streets
You’re gonna dance till the morning to the rebels beat
You can take everything from me
‘Cause this is all I need

You know that life is like a ticking clock
Nobody knows when it’s gonna stop, yeah
Before I’m gone I need to touch someone
With a word, with a kiss, with a decent song yeah
And it gets lonely when you live out loud
When the truth that you seek isn’t in this crowd
You better find your voice, better make it loud
We’re gonna burn that fire, or we’ll just burn out

http://www.googoodolls.com/rebelbeat/

We had our song, it had a happy beat, and words that resounded the story we found ourselves in.  This would be how we would close our home matches, win or lose.
Celebration!  We would dance our way back...

On Friday, February 15th Ellen had a routine endoscopy scheduled.  The kind of test we have become used to, to the point where we kidded each other about the "quality nap" that it provided.  After the test, Ellen's gastric doctor delivered the same report as usual.  Nothing worrisome on the camera, just took a few samples to biopsy.  We left the hospital feeling good. After three years of these tests, they have become easier to do, and the worry that had been present after the first few was finally gone. 

I have on many occasions described cancer as a murderer you never feared because he wasn't after you.  Once he enters your life, he won't stop stalking you.  You fear him.  He waits, in the darkness, maybe around the next corner.  We let our guard down.  He sneaked back in...

On February 23rd, two days before Ellen's 52nd Birthday, we got a troubling voicemail at home.
Hello Ellen,
This is the doctors office calling.
The doctor needs to speak to you. 
His cell number is...

The murderer is back.
In a lot of ways this is harder this time.  Maybe it's because we now know how hard it was the first time.  Maybe it's the enormousness of what we had been through in the last seven months.  My wife is this incredible human.  She is readying to go at this hard again.  On most days she is the one holding me up.  I am weary of the events of the past four years.  I hurt for her.  I want her well and whole.  I can't understand how so much has gone so wrong.  I worry for our kids.  I worry for our players.  I worry for me.

On the day of her latest procedure, a laproscopic look at her abdominal region to see if the cancer had spread there, Ellen had me laughing.  That's what she does.  She isn't the classic "bad ass", but she is more of one than I'll ever be.  My wife, Ellen Jane Toy, is in fact, a card carrying 'Bad Ass".

The test of her abdomen came back with no cancer activity, and so it is thought that the disease is confined to her stomach.  There will be surgery, likely soon, to remove most or all of what remains of it.
We are ready to except the challenges to come.  We know that with the prayers and support of our families, teams, and community God will see us through this too.

I really, really wanted to write about something positive, so I'll close with this.

Ellen's players, students, and friends have started an unlikely drive to have our story told.  They have chosen to take to Twitter, using the hashtag #EllenonEllen and the account @EllenonEllen to get the attention of The Ellen Show.  The effect has been incredible!  This blog saw a spike(volleyball jargon) is viewership of 600%!  I don't know if we have got Ellen DeGeneres's attention, but our story has been seen by nearly 3,000 people, literally around the world, in the past two days!  If you do twitter, support this effort.

Also, check out the Ellen on Ellen Blog at

http://www.ellenonellenkavb.blogspot.com/

Gracie McDermott has done a terrific job telling this story from a players perspective.  We are emboldened by these efforts, and can't wait to tell our story to the world.

Please keep us all in your prayers.

Tim

About a year ago, a package arrived in the mail for Ellen.  It was a gift from a former player, Jennifer McDowell.  Jenny has made volleyball her life.  After graduating from Plum High School,( and winning the PA state championship in her senior season) Jenny went on to play all four years at the University of Georgia, then Assistant Coach under her Head Coach at Georgia, Sid Feldman.  She accepted the Head Coaching job at Emory University in Atlanta in 1996.  In 16 seasons she has compiled a record of 512-128!  The gift made Ellen very proud!  It was Jenny's first book, a book of creative and competitive volleyball drills.  It would add more weight to the already bulky book bag Ellen carries to practice everyday.  Her backpack is filled with other drill books and handouts from clinics and camps she has attended.  She has made a habit of keeping as much of this accumulated information as that blue book bag can hold.  It must weigh 35lbs!  Add to that the experience gained by someone who has been coaching high school volleyball for 30 years.  Ellen has come up with a few innovations of her own, notably the "Setter's Box" employed to stop Kristy O'Hara from dropping her hands to her sides before and after setting, and the "Wrist Fusion" taping Jordan King's hands together, preventing her from playing balls with one hand.  Both of these inventions worked!  It would seem, Ellen had all the answers.

With all the combined knowledge contained in this hulking bookbag, and three decades of volleyball coaching, one would think there wasn't any question we couldn't answer.  Yet, with the challenges presented in the last four years, and particularly in the last four months, it seems totally insufficient.

How does a team deal with a coach battling cancer?

How do they respond to BOTH coaches in treatment?

How can you help them with their grief when they lose a coach to cancer?

What do you say when a beautiful young teammate is lost in an accident?

Any single one of these instances would derail any team, but all of them?

There's nothing in the coaches manual to help deal with this...

Every year, and I mean every year, we meet our team in the spring for the start of open gyms.  Open gyms are supposed to be where we can reinforce good skill habits, eliminate bad ones, engage in some gameplay, and learn little things about the team and the kids as individuals.  It is during this time, when we bond with these players.  Coaching this sport, and I'm sure most sports is like adding 30 more kids to your own family.  The kids on our team have rallied through the illnesses of their coaches, and they truly have become extensions of our actual families.  Texts and e-mails updating them on treatments and conditions, the ups and downs of what we had on our plate.  As in actual family members there was total disclosure on what was going on.   That's what made the news of late June so very difficult.  We received word, while at team camp at Pitt, that just a few miles down the road at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, our beautiful beloved young Assistant Coach, Jaime Moran, was losing her almost 12 year battle with leukemia.  Breaking this news to the kids was so terrible, but they had to find out from us.  We had to stay together on this.

Jaime left us on August 6th, 2012.  She fought cancer from the age of 14, and now at 26, her body could no longer take the rigors of aggressive treatment.  We gathered the kids at the high school, we talked, and cried, and prayed.  Jaime will leave and indelible mark on these kids.  Her grace, under the most difficult of situations was unmatched.  She showed them courage.  She showed them faith.  Her lessons on this will be with us forever.

I have never had a death in my life like this.  Understand that I made Jaime a priority in my life. .   Her condition, on any given day, dictated my emotions.  I NEVER prayed as fervently for anything in my entire life.  I gave platelets on at least ten occasions, and it helped that Jaime seemed to do well with my platelets.  I tied Jaime's survival to my own daily life.  There wasn't anytime during my day when I wasn't wondering how she was.  The day I met Jaime for the first time, I knew there was something special about her.  She reeled you in with those pretty eyes, and she won you over with that unbelievable smile.  If that wasn't enough(it was for me!) she was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside.  Jaime was the ONE who I wanted to fight for the most, because I recognized this incredible gift she had, and we needed her HERE.  That's what made her passing most difficult for me.  My faith was severely challenged.

 How could God not see what it is I have?  How could He get this so terribly wrong?  They say that we aren't privy to the plan, but how could this be part of the plan?  It was just unfathomable to me that He ask so much of this particular servant.  I don't think Jaime ever lost faith, but I had.  I talked with so may of my friends about this, consulted my most faith filled friends, and nobody could reach me.  I had no idea, the person who could have helped me the most was near me all along.  Sadly it took losing her to get me back.

Jenna Prusia possessed all of the attributes I have described in Jaime.  Pretty eyes, a winning smile, and personality that matched her outer beauty.  I never knew that while I was hurting so badly over Jaime's death, Jenna prayed for me.  She prayed for all of us, that we might find strength and renewed faith in Jesus.  

That's what makes Jenna's passing so tragic and personal.  I cannot get past the idea that she had to die so young, with so much to give the world.  It hurts so bad to watch her friends and teammates struggle with the emotions of losing someone so special to them.  At the same time, I recognize the lessons in her short life.

I have never seen the kind of INTENSE faith possessed in anyone, let alone a 16 year old.  I believe as the Pastor said, I have never known anyone so assuredly headed to God's right hand.  I also understand that should I be next, can the same thing be said of me?  I've got work to do...

I want to say, to the Prusia's, Jenna's dad Duane and her mom Vicki, her big brother Jared, and her twin sister Ashton, thank you for sharing the journal.  It is an inspiration to me and many others, and has helped us  in dealing with this tragedy.   To her friends and teammates, remind yourselves often of the lessons learned in our shared experiences, and especially in the faith of your dear friend.  She was indeed special!

So where do we go from here, when we can't find the answers we seek in the book bag or coaches manual? 

Maybe we search within ourselves, find a level of faith we didn't know existed.  Maybe we hold close to our friends, talk with them, seek their input.  Maybe we write our own manual or journal as it were, maybe it can someday help others dealing with trouble in their lives.  We have hurdles left to clear, but I assure you, neither Jaime or Jenna would want us to stand around staring at them for too long.  We will clear them together, I have FAITH.

Photo credit to Amy Myers for the incredible picture of Jenna.

Point Park's Pioneer Sideline did a feature on Jam the Gym.  Matt Desmond  and his crew did a great job capturing the emotion of the evening.  http://vimeo.com/50436666

The DVE Morning Show has been a terrific supporter of both Jammin' with Jaime and Jam the Gym.  Here they are striking the pose in their Jaime Strong Tee-shirts.  Many thanks to Randy Baumann and Jess Levo for all they have done!

WTAE came out to our event and this is the video from that evening's news.  We have had such great help from our friends in local media.  Folks like Jory Rand, Randy Bauman, Andrew Stockey, Brandon Hudson, and Mike Clark have been extremely involved in getting our story told.  Many thanks to them!

a

b

c

d

a.  Coach Ellen Toy, Christa Harmotto, and the Kiski Area Team during our National Anthem.
b.  A favorite moment captured.  Mia Wilson gets a ride on Thad Paunovich's shoulders, as the team is introduced.  Mia is battling ALL leukemia, and was Kiski's Honorary Captain.
c.  Coach Toy readies the team for an emotional evening.
d.  A real champion.  Christa took the time to sign every autograph and take memorable pictures with her fans.  It was an honor for us to have her as part of our event!
Photo credits to Erica Hilliard and used with permission of Trib Total Media