All Stars show respect for student’s loss
Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
Basketball took a time out at the beginning of All-Star Weekend as players and spectators remembered an Avondale student whose mother had died.
Mark Singh tapes a black band to the arm of Kenneth Lozada before the Rookies versus Returns All-Star game. Credit: Annalise Lindsay.
Kyle Armstrong has yet to return to college after the death of mother Kerrie at the family home in Forest Hill near Toowoomba, Queensland on April 25.
His friends paused to pray with other players and spectators before the Rookies versus Returns game on Saturday. Players in that game wore black armbands as “our way of showing respect,” says Avondale Basketball Association co-president Jarrod Cherry, a high school friend of Kyle’s.
The evening began on a musical note with four members of Avondale vocal ensemble The Promise performing their own arrangement of the national anthem.
In the games themselves, the women of Andre Hall defeated their contemporaries in Ella Boyd Hall 48-28 while in the men’s, Returns held off Rookies 63-60. Honours were even in Sunday’s City versus Country games, with the metro girls almost doubling their opponent’s score (45-24) and the rural guys winning comprehensively (68-45).