Amy Ogidan recalls feeling helpless when her friend died of cancer last year.

“I remember feeling almost victimized in a sense,” said Ogidan, who got to know 14-year-old Chanel Duncan just as she was becoming ill with the disease. “It didn’t seem fair that I became so close to her … and I wasn’t really able to get to know her before she was diagnosed and before she was sick.”

To combat her feelings of helplessness, Ogidan has organized a cancer fundraiser for Saturday, Nov. 6.

The 21-year-old education student is in her fourth year of playing basketball for the University of Winnipeg Wesmen.

After the Wesmen women play their home opener on Saturday against the University of Calgary Dinos, Ogidan and a handful of her teammates will cut their hair and donate it to the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation.

The hair will be used to make wigs for children who have lost their hair during cancer treatment.

Ogidan is inviting anyone who is interested to do the same. If donating hair isn’t a possibility, people can donate money that will go toward cancer research. Fifty per cent of admission to the games is being donated to CancerCare, as well as some of the money made from concession and t-shirt sales.

For Ogidan, it’s important that the money goes to help children.

“That’s something that I feel is almost hidden just in terms of the publicity that most cancer fundraisers get,” she said. “Often times it’s breast cancer or prostate cancer, and not to say those aren’t important, but I feel childhood cancer is something that is so real and happens more frequently than we’re used to being exposed to.

“So that’s what I’m excited about – is bringing awareness to something that is probably largely ignored in terms of donation dollars.”
According to the Childhood Cancer Foundation, there are about 10,000 children living with cancer in Canada today.

More than 70 per cent of children diagnosed with cancer become long-term survivors and the majority of them are considered cured.

But that wasn’t the case for Chanel, who died just over a year ago after being diagnosed in November 2008.

Opal Duncan, her mother, describes Chanel as a loving, conscientious girl who had aspirations of some day playing in the Women’s National Basketball Association and being a pediatrician.

“Chanel was kind, she was generous, she always thought of others before herself and she was just a nice, nice girl,” Duncan said. “You wouldn’t meet one person that did not like her. … She was every mother’s dream.”

Ogidan got to know Chanel through Winnipeg’s basketball community. The two became fast friends as Chanel’s illness progressed.

“She was an amazing person,” Ogidan said.

“I only got to know her very well when she was sick but it was just crazy how inspiring she always was. Any time I left being with her, I always felt uplifted and optimistic and happy and joyful.

“That was just the kind of person she was. Even when she was fighting and battling, she managed to evoke those emotions out of you.”

The Wesmen women play at 6 p.m. on Nov. 6 at the Duckworth Centre (400 Spence St.), with head shaving and hair cutting scheduled for 8:30 p.m., during half-time of the men’s game. Admission at the door is $8 for adults, $4 for students and free for children under 12. For more information, visit www.tinyurl.com/buzzoffcancer.

Published in Volume 65, Number 10 of The Uniter (November 4, 2010)