Player’s death has left positive legacy through alumni game

Sometimes when people experience tragedy it isn’t necessarily the initial event that people remember, but what comes out of it and whether it can be turned into something positive. Darren Floyd, a junior at Park Hill High School, was involved in a car accident that claimed the life of him and classmate Brandon McPherson in the spring of 2004. Unfortunately, the accident hit home for me as both were good friends of mine and we had only left minutes apart on our ways home. The effect their deaths had not only on me, but parents, teachers, family, and friends was enormous. It isn’t death and sadness I want to focus on though, but how the tragedy has resulted in the creation of something special at Park Hill High School that will be on display this Saturday night in the school’s gymnasium.
Darren, an avid athlete, had previously finished his junior basketball season by receiving team awards for his high three-point shooting percentage and the team leadership award for his outstanding character and attitude. Knowing about his love for the game, parents and friends decided to name a scholarship fund in his memory. Not only would they start the scholarship, but they would fund it by putting together an exhibition basketball game featuring former players in a friendly hoops game. The first game was held in January of 2005 and a crowd usually un-seen at regular varsity games filled the gymnasium in an outpouring of support. Thousands of dollars would be raised over the next three years; eventually it was enough to officially endow the Darren Floyd Memorial Scholarship with the Park Hill Education Foundation and an additional scholarship to be awarded to a graduating member of the boy’s basketball team for college. In 2007, Darren’s #14 was retired by the program and remains the only basketball player to have had that privilege.
After the scholarship had been endowed and Darren’s number retired, there were some who thought there wasn’t a need to continue the game as an annual event. What they hadn’t realized though, is the game in and of itself had become something meaningful in ways the inaugural organizers had not envisioned. It was something former players started to look forward to each year. As it tends to be the case with high school, some alumni didn’t have any other reason to come back, but would for a worthy cause. For recent graduates, it was something they had come to expect to participate in as new alumni. Even those who weren’t familiar with the original circumstances or the person for which the game is named would have at least one thing in common, a love for the game. With the demand so high, a new energized group of current basketball parents and friends put forward their time to make sure the alumni game stayed alive along with the different symbolic meanings it had for each person involved.
With that in mind, one of the only events of its kind in the area is set to tip-off again this Saturday. The fifth annual game features the largest contingent of returning alumni players yet. The game will once again be a reminder of how fragile life is, but also how positive things can result from the most tragic of circumstances. It wouldn’t be able to happen if five years ago a committed group of people didn’t try to do the right thing and bring a community in mourning together. The feeling those in the gym on Saturday night will experience can be credited to Darren because of the 17 years of life he lived and also a reflection on us in the previous five years he’s been absent.