Living the Dream Basketball-In Honor of Pat Welsh

On April 20, 2018 we lost Pat Welsh, Jr., to rhabdomyosarcoma . Since losing Pat, our family has been looking for ways to increase awareness of and research to cure and treat rhabdomyosarcoma as it is a rare and brutal cancer that predominantly impacts children, but also adults like Pat. There is no cure for this cancer as of now, but treatments are improving.

Pat spent his last three years fighting a painful battle with his cancer while being full of gratitude for the great life he lived. Whenever he was asked how he was doing he would respond in all sincerity by saying “Living the Dream”. Sadly, most of the children that have rhabdomyosarcoma never get the chance to live their dreams or even know what their dreams are as all they have known is battling cancer.

In Pat’s honor we have put together a basketball team, named Living the Dream, to compete in the upcoming TBT tournament which is winner-take-all for $1,000,000. The hope is to win this tournament and donate $500,000 to a cancer foundation that focuses on childhood cancers like rhabdomyosarcoma and the UCLA Sarcoma Program. The other half will be used to pay expenses and then be divided among the players (most teams divide all winnings among the players). Two of Pat’s three sons will be playing on the team - Tom and Henry! We have also recruited players who competed for UCLA, SCU, USC, UConn and VCU.

The team plays in Wichita starting July 19 and in Philadelphia on August 2, if we progress to the final four. All games can be viewed on the ESPN channels.

Our hope, beyond winning the tournament, is for this to be the start of a “Living the Dream” foundation that will raise money and awareness for childhood cancers with the goal of helping children and families beat cancer and be able to live their dreams. We are currently working on setting up a 501(c)(3) for this foundation. It takes time and apparently can be retroactive. We have also discussed the possibility of raising money for an existing cancer 501 (c)(3) like the UCLA Sarcoma Program which is where Pat's oncologist, Dr. Arun Singh works and is currently doing a clinical trial on a rhabdomyosarcoma treatment.

However, in the meantime, we are looking for a core team of "Foundation LTD Boosters" to kick off our "Living the Dream" team- helping to cover the immediate costs of their practices/travel/lodging in Santa Clara (practices) and Kansas (first round of regionals). If you feel compelled to help us with this cause, we would greatly appreciate any contribution! We have 12 players. TBT will pay all travel and hotel expenses after the regional (first) round, but we need to cover the costs of travel, lodging, food and other expenses for our practices (at SCU) and the first round (in Wichita.)

The games have not even started, and we can already say this TBT experience has been quite the ride! We truly feel honored to be a part of it, and working with these amazing young basketball players and family and friends who have offered their time to help make this vision a reality.

I hope to see each of you soon and GO LIVING THE DREAM!

An additional way to support the team/cause is to go to the Living the Dream page and sign up for team updates where it says “Get Team Updates” (image below for reference). If we have 250 people do this, we (and cancer research) will get a portion of all Living the Dream merchandise sold by TBT!