Toms River South Softball Helps Chris's Fight For A Cure

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Balls and strikes. Runs and walks. Hits and errors. These are usually the statistics trackd by the Toms River South softball team.

On Thursday, May 10, however, they will be tracking those stats and one that will be far more important to them: dollars donated to the Chris's Fight For A Cure Foundation.

Chris's Fight For A Cure was founded by Chris J.Nolze, a 2013 Toms River South graduate who was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2007. He fought the disease from middle school through high school and has dealt with numerous side effects along the way, including a reaction to a medication that resulted in him relying on a wheelchair for a time and trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic pain condition that results from stimulation of a nerve in the face.

The foundation aims to raise funds for research into cures both for cancer and trigeminal neuralgia, but it also assists families faced with a serious illness.

Danielle Gabriel, the Toms River South assistant softball coach, has known Nolze since middle school and watched him fight cancer and the effects from it.

The former Indians' pitcher said she had participated in fundraisers with the softball team at Manhattan College, and she saw the impact and the importance of that work, and wanted to bring those lessons to the current crop of Indians' players.

"We did work for the Wounded Warrior Project," Gabriel said of her college days. "It puts your life in perspective when you see what people are going through. I thought it would be good for these girls (the Toms River South softball team)."

The team currently is wearing gray shoelaces in remembrance of those fighting childhood cancer. And it was Nolze who delivered the laces to the team, she said. The team had decided to do the fundraiser for the foundation at that point, but the laces delivery changed their perspective, Gabriel said.

"When Chris came to practice to drop them off, you could tell he was going through a strugglem" Gabriel said. "I think it became a lot more personal for them after that."

The Indians' softball team is taking donations for pledges ranging from the number of strikeouts recorded by the pitcher to the number of hits or runs by batters.

"We just want to show a little support," Gabriel said.

The donations will be accepted Thursday, May 10, when the Indians host Colts Neck at 7 p.m.

Gabriel said returning to Toms River South to coach was important to her.

"There's something different about South," she said. "We're a family."

"I want to assist in making sure people don't have to go through what I went through," Nolze says on the Facebook page for the foundation. "People shouldn't need to worry about having an incurable disease, and my goal is to make sure there is a cure for any type of disease so that they don't have to worry."

Toms River South's softball team coaches and senior players. Head coach Tom Malek, Hayley Tamaro, Samantha Wall, Michelle Hewson, Mackenzie Byrne and assistant coach Danielle Gabriel. Photo by Samantha Wall, published with permission