‘Yellow Out’ in honor of fallen Comet; CC girls to hold ‘Sarcoma Awareness Night’

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

Life is what happens when you’re planning something else.

Danielle Rippentrop and her Charles City girls basketball team had planned to hold a “Sarcoma Awareness Night” in honor of former Comet Amy Boley Heiter.

“We wanted to do it during a girls-boys varsity doubleheader because we wanted to attract the biggest crowd possible,” Rippentrop said of the DH against Hampton-Dumont scheduled for Jan. 28.

“But the season and the weather kind of got away from us.”

Due to weather, the Hampton-Dumont DH was rescheduled for Feb. 1 before being scrapped to make room for the Iowa Caucuses as the high school served as one of the sites.

“We went on with the bake sale and collected donations,” Rippentrop said, “but we still wanted to do something special in public in her honor.”

Tonight, if the weather finally cooperates, the Comets will formally honor Amy and her courageous fight against sarcoma cancer during the intermission between the junior varsity and varsity girls basketball games against Waukon.

Unfortunately, the boys varsity will be playing at Waukon. Nonetheless, Rippentrop is hopeful for a strong and colorful showing.

“There will be a public reading about her life and her battle,” Rippentrop said. “It will also be a ‘Yellow Out’ … we’re asking fans to come to the game wearing yellow, because that’s the color for the fight against sarcoma cancer.”

Rippentrop was a former teammate of Amy’s … sort of.

“She was a couple of years younger than me, so I was playing varsity while she was on JV,” Rippentrop said. “You could say we were on the same team, just at different levels.”

Amy went on to become a varsity player herself, then continued her basketball career at Northern Iowa Area Community College.

She later pursued a career in education while attending the University of Northern Iowa, and married her high school sweetheart Jeffrey Heiter on June 8, 2013.

In October of that same year, Amy was hospitalized with severe stomach pains. That’s when she was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare cancer.

“She was a strong person who came from a strong family,” said Rippentrop, who is good friend of Amy’s older sister, Crystal. “At the time (when she was diagnosed) she was a student-teacher and was a great influence to her students.”

Amy didn’t stop living … and fighting. She walked through graduation at Northern Iowa several months after the diagnosis. Her resilience inspired the community to join in the fight as numerous benefits were held to help defray the medical costs.

April of last year, Amy died at the age of 23.

“She was a special person who touched a lot of people,” Rippentrop said. “Our girls are too young to have know her personally, but they know she was a Comet just like them and they’ve gotten behind this cause.”

This is the first benefit the Comets have held under fourth-year coach Rippentrop.

“It may be too early to say if this is going to be an annual thing,” she said. “I would like for it to be, but we’ll see how it goes.”