By Caitlin Opperman

This Saturday the women’s basketball team is thinking pink. During Feb. 11’s 3 p.m. game against Gustavus Adolphus the team will host the annual Pink Zone event to support breast cancer research. All donations will be given to the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) Kay Yow Cancer Fund. “We are all really excited to join women’s basketball teams across the nation in supporting the WBCA for its efforts to contribute to breast cancer research and raise breast cancer awareness,” team veteran Maggie Wood ’12 said. According to the Macalester athletics website, the WBCA’s Pink Zone initiative began in 2007 and has grown to include over 1,800 participating teams each year. The event has raised almost $3.3 million since its inception. The Kay Yow Cancer Fund is named after the legendary basketball coach of the gold-medalist 1988 USA women’s Olympic team who also coached at North Carolina State from 1975-2009. She passed away in 2009 after fighting breast cancer for the third time. Yow was a co-founder of the WBCA. Saturday’s game will feature a paper-airplane-making contest at halftime during which fans can donate a dollar in exchange for a piece of paper. Donations of all sizes will be collected until halftime. The women will be decked out in pink jerseys for the game, and the team is asking fans to wear pink as well. “A couple of the women on the team have been touched by cancer, so it means a lot to all of us,” Coach Ellen Thompson said.