CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – The sign hangs in front of Rainbow International on College Street, less than a mile from Austin Peay State University’s Dave Aaron Arena, home of the school’s basketball Governors.
“March Madness is here,” it proclaims.
“Let’s Go Peay!”
Then, on line 3, “#Rally4Rhyan”
Said Rainbow employee B.J. Sellers, who’s lived in this burgeoning midstate town all her life: “We’re a growing community, but in many ways we’re still a small town. And everyone in this town is pulling for that little girl (Rhyan Loos). She’s what has made going to this NCAA tournament so special.”
It’s always a special moment for the fan bases of the 68 schools whose names are called during CBS’s annual Selection Show, which will begin this evening at 5:30 EDT.
But the fans of every school not facing Ohio Valley Conference tournament champ Austin Peay should strongly consider adopting the Governors as their second favorite tourney team, if only because of the battle 6-year-old Rhyan Loos is fighting to beat stage 4 neuroblastoma, a pediatric cancer that mostly attacks children under the age of 5.
“She went to the doctor on Monday, October fifth,” longtime Austin Peay head basketball coach Dave Loos, Rhyan’s grandfather, recalled Thursday. “Rhyan had been walking with a limp for a few weeks. The doctors first thought it was arthritis. Then they thought it might be leukemia. But by that Wednesday, everybody was telling Brad and Jen that she had stage 4 cancer.”
Following in his father’s coaching footsteps, Brad Loos is an assistant coach at Missouri under second-year Tigers boss Kim Anderson, which means much of the parenting of their three children falls to his wife, Jen, a former college soccer standout.
“Brad, like me, he could use basketball as an escape,” Dave Loos said. “I don’t know how Jen’s done it. I don’t think she’s been more than 10 feet from Rhyan since the diagnosis. She’s just been so tough.”
Said Jen to the Kansas City Star last month: “As we were sitting in that waiting room, when we thought it was arthritis, we’re thinking that was the worst thing possible. Now that we’re going through cancer, I would take arthritis in a heartbeat. I honestly don’t know how that day (we found out) we were able to pick ourselves up off of the floor and go in that room with Rhyan.”
The five-plus months since have been both tough and touching for all concerned. Rhyan, who turned 6 on Tuesday, has endured five chemotherapy treatments since October.
On March 2, the same day the Governors began their inspirational march through the OVC tourney, she had a tumor removed from her kidney during a six-hour surgery at New York City’s renowned Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Radiation is expected to follow.
A cancer that strikes roughly 700 children a year, neuroblastoma accounts for 6 percent of childhood cancers, and 90 percent of the cases surface in children 5 years old or younger.
“It’s obviously a tough story,” said Austin Peay athletic director Ryan Ivey. “But if any good has come from this it’s that it’s generating much-needed funding and awareness for pediatric cancer.”
That awareness has been in place around both the Austin Peay and Missouri campuses since word first spread of Rhyan’s diagnosis. Staging a fundraiser as part of the visit from Tennessee, Mizzou raised $50,000. Loos experienced similar generosity at APSU, beginning with his players, who wore red long-sleeve warmup shirts all season that had “#Rally4Rhyan” printed on the shirts’ backs.
“Lots of businesses in town have stepped up,” he said. “One jeweler donated three really expensive pieces of jewelry. I wound up buying one of them for my wife (Phyllis) for our 45th anniversary. At a time like this, you find out how many really good people there are in the world.”
Those people have come out of the woodwork since Austin Peay shocked the college basketball community by winning four straight OVC tourney games after entering the event with a 14-17 record. And the Govs had to win four of their last six regular-season games to do that well.
“We started getting better the last month or so,” said Loos, who’s wrapping up his 26th season as Austin Peay’s head coach. “We won at Murray State and we won at Eastern Illinois. We all know how important confidence is, and we started to develop some.”
Still, the Govs were 19 down to Tennessee State in the quarterfinals before rallying to win by two. Then came Belmont in the semis. APSU prevailed 97-96 in overtime thanks to a replay monitor that disallowed a tip-in at the horn by Belmont that had been called good. After that, the championship win over UT-Martin almost seemed pre-ordained.
“I’ve done this four times,” Loos said of his NCAA tourney appearances. “But I would have to put this near the top because of where we came from to accomplish this.”
In the time that has passed since that title guaranteed the Govs a bid, Loos estimates he’s received more than 400 text messages from coaches and friends all across the country, including every other OVC coach, Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy and former Vanderbilt and South Carolina coach Eddie Fogler. Donations have increased. One childhood friend he hadn’t seen since high school called and sent, in Loos’s words, “a really large check.”
“One of the first coaches I heard from was (Belmont coach) Rick Byrd,” he added. “I’m certain he wasn’t happy about losing that game, but he wasn’t unhappy about us winning the tournament. Most of the texts read something like, ‘Hey, congratulations, and I’m also thinking of your granddaughter.’ Those two thoughts seem to run together.”
It’s all run together to make a story so inspirational and touching that Ivey proclaimed, “Hollywood couldn’t have written a more amazing script.”
Said Austin Peay senior forward Chris Horton: “This tournament was for Coach. We played for Rhyan. Knowing what she has been going through, we wanted to even play harder for her and Coach Loos.”
The hard struggles aren’t over for Rhyan and her family. Her cancer had metastasized before it was found. It spread to her bone marrow, her bloodstream, her upper femur and hip.
Said Loos: “She’s in for a tough fight, but as my son said, ‘If you’re going to be around (Rhyan), you better have a smile on your face.”
Upon clinching the tournament title on March 5, Loos got a call from his son, Jen and Rhyan.
“They’d watched it in the hospital room in New York City,” Dave Loos said. “I get choked up just thinking about it.”
Who wouldn’t? And because of that, shouldn’t everyone make the Govs no worse than their second favorite team in the 2016 NCAA tourney?
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com