By: Joe Delaney

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

It just a PAT right? Point after touchdown……easy peasy.

The team scores and the kicker comes in and tacks on another point.

Tuck Tucker, the kicker for the Glynn Academy Red Terrors, has hit 10 of them so far in this short season.

I was lucky enough to coach Tuck when he was 11 and 12 years old. I coach the kickers and QBs and he was our kicker on the 2019 State Championship Glynn County Broncos U-12 rec department team.

Head down, drive through Tuck! You lift your head, your running another lap! I don’t know if he was extremely coachable or hated running laps. Probably a little of both! Just a great kid with a great attitude.

Fast forward to today and while Tuck is kicking for the Red Terrors, he’s stepped into something much bigger. He has become a part of the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to researching and finding cures and assisting children with pediatric cancers.

Alexandra “Alex” Scott was born in 1996, the second of 4 children in the Scott family. At the age of 1 she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a deadly type of childhood cancer.

At the age of 4 Alex asked her parents if she could open a lemonade stand to help with the fight against the disease. Out of this wooden Lemonade stand, selling cups of lemonade with the proceeds going to Cancer research, grew the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation that has raised millions of dollars for pediatric cancer research.

The Foundations motto is “Fighting childhood cancer, one cup at a time.” The mission statement is “Our mission is to change the lives of children with cancer through funding impactful research, raising awareness, supporting families, and empowering everyone to help cure childhood cancer.”

You can donate by going to the Foundation site online or at the lemonade stand at the Red Terrors home games.

And while you’re on the website, look for Tucks page.

Just type in Tuck Tucker on the ALSF search bar. His page is KICK! Cancer with Tuck Tucker.

It reads the following, “Im holding a fundraiser to help Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation move one step closer to finding a cure for all children with cancer. Ill be dedicating my season to kids with cancer by turning my stats into life-saving research dollars”.

“Please make a donation of any amount toward my fundraising goal. The money you donate will pay for research to find better treatments and cures for childhood cancer. You can help kids and their families by providing desperately needed hope!”

The Foundation has funded more than ONE THOUSAND Medical Research Grants since 2005.

According to Dr. David Poplack, “The ALSF grant program is helping researchers throughout the country move closer to the day when a cure is a reality…”

The ALSF is the only childhood cancer research organization that has been given the National Cancer Institute peer-reviewed funder designation for rigorous selection of research grants.   That’s how donations are helping.

I’d love to say that Alex Scott is alive and well and working with the Foundation. She would be 27 years old now. Sadly, that’s not the case.

Pediatric cancer is a killer and it took Alex’s life in 2004 at the age of 8. Before she died, Alex had raised over a million dollars for cancer research and inspired all around her. And it all started with a front yard lemonade stand and a girl who cared. So does Tuck. Give if you can.

As I was talking to Tuck, our conversation naturally went to kicking and I asked the junior kicker about the season.

He said he had made 10 out of 12 PATS with one of those being a block.

Well, what about the first one that you missed I asked? He said he saw the rush and clanked it off the crossbar. I said yep, you raised your head……..I didn’t make him run a lap.