Typically, the month of October is marked by a pink ribbon in support of breast cancer awareness. But for the students of Palmerton Area High School, who wanted to support someone in their community, the month was geared toward supporting one of their fellow students, whose father was diagnosed with throat cancer in June.

Through a night of volleyball matches on Friday, the girls volleyball team joined with the boys basketball team to raise money for senior Danielle Stetler’s father, Mark.

“We decided instead of breast cancer — we were still going to do our dig pink, cause it’s a volleyball thing, too — we would choose a family and donate the money to them,” said Jennifer Bates, vice president of the volleyball parents club.

Leading up to Friday’s game, the team also sold white, long-sleeve T-shirts with Stetler’s name printed across the bottom. The shirts, designed to be for sale at the event, sold out beforehand.

That may sound like bad news, but it wasn’t. Bates said 27 teachers and faculty wore the shirts during school Friday, as did a number of the students.

“The outpour has been amazing,” Bates said. “Like everywhere you looked (Friday), everyone was wearing this shirt.”

A few months ago, Stetler went to the doctor for what he described was a “persistent sore throat.” He thought that his allergies were the cause, and after seeking medical attention, he was diagnosed as having an abscess on his throat.

But a biopsy proved both he and the doctor’s original conclusions were wrong. Stetler had cancer.

“It all went very quick from there,” Stetler recalled. “We work with Lehigh Valley Health Network, and they got a team together. It was just one thing after another.”

Grim though his diagnosis was, Stetler wasn’t to face the disease on his own. He had the support of his family and his community.

“It’s a heck of a community,” Stetler said of not only Friday’s volleyball match, but of a benefit the girl’s soccer team also hosted on his behalf. “The way they’ve come together — I don’t feel like I deserve it.”

But Stetler’s wife, Kathleen, thought her husband was being modest.

“And he does,” she interjected. “He’s a wonderful man, a wonderful father and husband.”

Kathleen said she knew the volleyball team wanted to show support for her husband but never imagined that the students, who she affectionately refers to as “(their) kids,” would put on a show like the one displayed that night.

One side of the bleachers was bustling with community members, the trademark T-shirts boasting her husband’s name filled the court, music filled the air, the football team emceed the game and a table full of prizes for a basket raffle stood just outside the gym.

“It’s overwhelming,” Kathleen said.

“Our friends didn’t know what to do, because they wanted to take the cancer from him and they can’t. So this is their way of giving back,” she said.

Stetler just finished about seven weeks of chemotherapy and radiation in September. Hopefully, Kathleen said, he will soon be in remission.

“With all this love, we can’t have anything else,” she said.