Now that's thinking

The slogan of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association's second-year breast cancer awareness program is "Think Pink."

It's questionable how sunny and pink North Central College women's basketball coach Emily Bauer's thoughts were last fall.

The Cardinals' six-year coach took family medical leave to attend to her mother in Montana, Tammy Bauer, who was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments to combat breast cancer.

Earlier, North Central senior guard Katherine Menendez's mother went through a year and a half of treatment for breast cancer.

"That was really tough for Katherine," Emily Bauer said. "That's when it really hit home for us, having someone on the team go through it."

According to Breast Cancer Awareness.com, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer; the disease claims 40,000 people annually.

Making people aware of sad numbers like those and giving them the impetus to help is the basis of the second annual Think Pink Week, which will be observed Feb. 8-17.

Wheaton College will hold an event Saturday. Elmhurst College is also planning one, and the men's team had a Think Pink game on Jan. 16.

For North Central's 7 p.m. game Saturday against Carthage College, there will be a 50-50 raffle with proceeds toward the Edward Hospital Cancer Center in Naperville, but as Bauer said, "The main thrust is the awareness."

Anyone who attends the Cardinals game wearing pink will receive free admission. The coaches and event staff will be dressed in the color, and players will warm up in pink T-shirts and wear pink shoe laces.

The Think Pink initiative was started in 2007, the first of the Kay Yow/WBCA Cancer Fund, in partnership with the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Yow, the North Carolina State women's basketball coach, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and is battling the disease for the third time.

In 2007 about 120 schools nationwide held "Pink" events. This year there are more than 600.

"It was a success," Bauer said, "but this year it's really huge. Everybody is jumping on board."

Nice timing

When the keynote speaker was booked months in advance for Notre Dame's Opening Night Dinner, the university's seventh annual preseason baseball event, the intrigue may not have been what it is now.

With last month's Mitchell Report detailing performance-enhancing drug use in professional baseball, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig could have a lot to say.

Not that he will. Still, it was quite a coup to land the commissioner, pulled off by Notre Dame assistant coach Scott Lawler, son of Naperville Central's Hall of Fame assistant baseball coach, Phil Lawler.

"One, he's getting the commissioner of baseball," Phil Lawler said. "And now he's getting a person who is in the news."

It's not the first time Scott Lawler, a 1995 Naperville Central graduate, has scored a bigwig. Last year he helped wrangle Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland.

Leyland's a Notre Dame fan anyway, Phil Lawler said, and he and Scott hit it off so well Leyland returned last fall for a football game and dinner. Leyland later sent his son to a Notre Dame baseball camp.

Lawler's insights and pedigree -- not only is his father a respected baseball lifer but his uncle Jim is the Arkansas-Little Rock coach after stops at Texas A&M, Gonzaga and Texas-El Paso -- is paying off at Notre Dame as it did as a recruiter at Northern Illinois and Evansville.

Phil Lawler said Notre Dame's freshman class is ranked fourth best in the country. The Irish roster includes not just sophomore Billy Boockford of Glenbard West, but freshman Mick Doyle of Benet -- and freshman Matt Scioscia, the son of Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia.

Knights of the Hall of Fame

Not only does St. Francis' boys basketball team face a hostile crowd tonight in Immaculate Conception's snuggly gym, the IC faithful will be further jazzed by the halftime induction of 14 new members into its Athletic Hall of Fame.

It's always nice to be able to accept your honor humously rather than post-, which happily is the case for inductee Jean Field, among IHSA all-time leaders with more than 700 volleyball wins.

Unfortunately, former Knights football coach and inductee Robert Shields is no longer with us.

Nor is Jack Lewis, the three-time DuPage County football coach of the year with seven conference championships between 1969-91 under his belt, and a 1987 admission into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame.

Other inductees include 1960s basketball stars Jay Popp and Jim Morgan, former big league pitcher Lee "Skip" Pitlock, girls track and basketball stars Elaine Curran and Linda Tully, and Andrew Pinter, a 1995 IC grad who as the White Sox's assistant director of scouting and baseball operations earned a 2005 World Series ring.