Team Plays, Works To Support Sick Member

Player Battling Cancer For Five Years

 

Ron Cioffi/USTA Southern

It’s been five years since the Georgia 8.0 team got the news that their captain and teammate, Louis Jenkins, had prostate cancer.

Matt Hull, who is acting captain in Jackson, told the story that has inspired the team and driven them to start a tournament to raise money for his care.

“There’s no quit in him,” Hall said about Jenkins.

Jenkins is best known as a longtime high school basketball coach who led the Richard Arnold High School team to the state playoffs and then later coached at Windsor Forest High School, both in Savannah, Ga. Former players have returned to see Jenkins and have helped out around his house, Hall reported.

About eight years ago Jenkins took up tennis and his athletic ability and drive helped him succeed in tennis, Hall recounted. But the cancer and treatments has worn him down to the point now where, as his wife, Angie, wrote he has become immobile.

Louis made the trip from Savannah to Augusta for the State Championships as a spectator. “I think the trip wore him down,” Hall said. “He went straight to hospice.”

With the Jenkins faced with $165 a day charges for the care, the team is organizing the Throw Back/Give Back Tournament next Saturday, Oct. 24 in Savannah’s Bacon Park. The doubles tournament will feature wood racquets, white balls and “shorts that are much too short,” Hall said.