UNC basketball team connects with pediatric cancer patients through Shoes 4 Hope

When 7-year-old Jude Rifkin woke up Sunday morning, he had one question for his mother.

“Is today the basketball shoe day?”

It was. Rifkin had been thinking about this day for a while. Rams and basketballs would go on the side of his sneakers. Sketches of Black Panther — because a superhero had to make it on there — to adorn the tongues. Rifkin had it all mapped out long before he stepped into the UNC men’s basketball practice gym, where paint, blank shoes and brushes were awaiting him. Several Tar Heel players soon joined.

Rifkin, a Carrboro native, has been undergoing treatment for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia for more than a year. He was diagnosed in October 2024. The prognosis is good, but the road is long and, according to his mother, Carolyn Byrne, can be “pretty bumpy at times.”

For a few hours on Sunday, though, that all disappeared. Rifkin got to focus on being a kid. He and his little brother, Noah, shot hoops and talked about their favorite Marvel characters with members of the North Carolina men’s basketball team. The only worry? Where the next splash of paint should go.

“The boys had a blast,” Byrne said. “It’s always so fun to be connected to the community. I was thinking about that on the ride home… it is a community. It’s such an anchor for us.”

Students lead the effort

The event was organized by Shoes 4 Hope, a student-led initiative that partners with college athletic programs and children’s hospitals to host shoe-painting experiences for pediatric cancer patients and their families. The idea began with founder Ben Herold, a former University of Virginia student, who used to paint shoes with a high school friend, Tess Trueblood, during her leukemia treatment. It has since expanded to campuses across the country, including UNC’s chapter led by students Reid Snyder, Jake Frantz and Kathryn Busby. The goal, Herold said, is simple: give kids and their families a break from the hospital and a way to tell their own stories — in color and on their own terms.

“I think stories are probably the most powerful thing we have,” Herold said. “By being able to do this, put these experiences on... you get to meet them in such an intimate way.”

On Sunday, UNC players like James Brown, Jaydon Young and Kyan Evans learned Rifkin’s story.

The three Tar Heels approached Rifkin’s table as he hunched over his shoes, fully locked in. He had, after all, been planning this for a while. The trio of Tar Heels began to cheer Rifkin on.

He’s painting away! Yeah he focused! He knows what he wants to do!

Rifkin, with some prompting, briefly explained his designs to the players before dropping his head and returning to the task at hand. His mom filled in the rest.

“We call his medicine the Avengers,” she told them. “It’s coming to defeat Thanos.”

“Thanos is the leukemia!” Rifkin chirped, before turning to his mom to ask, “When did my leg stop hurting?”

“About a month after the Hulk medicine,” she replied, a code name they landed on for her son’s high-dosage steroid treatment.

“Oh yeah!” Rifkin yelled, jumping up. He demonstrated a “HULK SMASH!” by hitting his mom gently, then collapsing dramatically to the floor, acting out the villain’s defeat.

The players laughed, returning the conversation to Rifkin’s favorite comic book heroes. Brown and Young later said that moment stuck with them.

“We come to practice every single day, and sometimes we complain, sometimes we don’t want to,” Young said. “Coming in here, it makes you want to run through a wall for these kids, just seeing them and exactly what they’re going through. The story (Jude) just gave us definitely puts everything exactly where it should be for us.”

Cherished moments

Hours earlier, Rifkin had been instantly captivated by the Christmas tree inside the North Carolina basketball offices.

“Look! Basketball ornament, Noah!” the 7-year-old shouted, tugging his 3-year-old brother toward the tree. Noah waddled closer and the two reached up, brushing the soft, puffy ornaments with care.

On Sunday morning, the Rifkins and six other families were greeted in the lobby of the UNC men’s basketball facility by Ragan Copeland, the team’s director of community engagement, and Kelsie Boykin, program coordinator for UNC Health Pediatric Hematology-Oncology.

“We’re going to paint some shoes, shoot some hoops and have a great time today,” Copeland said before leading the group through a tour of the facility — including the players’ lounge, locker room and more.

Dr. Patrick Thompson, MD, a professor of pediatrics at UNC, joked he needed to remodel his closet after stepping into the locker room. A 15-year-old patient, Riley Darcy of Burlington, stared in amazement. Woah! This is nice!

Caroline Gwaltney, a team manager, quickly added, “This is the cleanest it’ll ever be.” Darcy and Gwaltney shared a laugh.

Darcy, a sophomore at Burlington’s Walter M. Williams High School, has been in treatment for leukemia since June 2024. Her hair — once shaved during treatment — has grown back just enough for a wavy pixie cut.

“But, honestly, I’ve learned to not really care about what my hair looks like,” Darcy said. “At the end of the day, my hair is not who I am. It’s more about me.”

Darcy is wise like that. On Sunday, Darcy painted clean, sharp lines onto a pair of white shoes — “I just wanted to do something that looks nice and classy,” she said — with Carolina blue accents. Assistant coach Sean May stopped by to chat with Darcy.

He’ll be wearing the shoes she painted on Feb. 2, when North Carolina hosts Syracuse at the Dean E. Smith Center. As part of the Coaches vs. Cancer initiative, all of UNC’s coaches will face off against the Orange in custom shoes from Sunday’s event. The sneakers will be auctioned off in coordination with the Syracuse game, with proceeds benefiting the Pediatric Hematology-Oncology program.

“I know I’m gonna be in good hands. She does a phenomenal job,” May said of Darcy. “I was glad I got to come down and see her… for her to be able to just have a smile on her face, knowing what she has and what she’s facing — she’s tougher than all of us.”

UNC players gain perspective

Later, Dr. Thompson framed it simply: the kids are the real superheroes. He wasn’t quiet in his opinion, either. Thompson spent a good portion of Sunday morning working the room, often stopping the players to ask them, “What was your worst injury?”

They might respond: ankle. Perhaps they had to ice it for a while. Then Thompson would turn to a nearby patient to compare notes.

“It was like, ‘OK Jude, are you tougher than Caleb (Wilson)?’” Thompson said. “You’ve gone through a couple years of chemotherapy, you get lumbar punctures, you get bone marrows, you get all these kinds of medicines. So who’s tougher?”

Darcy laughed as she recalled a player or two who detailed their ankle injuries upon Thompson’s prompting. She shrugged and said, “makes sense for what they’re doing,” but recognized, with a silent nod in agreement, that’s nothing compared to what she’s been through.

The 15-year-old has another surgery scheduled for Tuesday and admitted she was a bit nervous at the start of the event. But by the time she was painting alongside May and sophomore forward Ivan Matlekovic, she mentioned the operation in a very matter-of-fact way, as if it were just a routine checkup.

By the end of the event, an impressive array of painted shoes scattered the folding tables in the gym. Darcy said she was grateful to have taken part. Sunday was just one of many memorable experiences she’s enjoyed over the past year, from a trip to Disney through Make-A-Wish to cheering on the Hurricanes at several games.

“I’ve just been able to do a lot of things I wouldn’t have been able to do without being sick,” Darcy said. “I’m just grateful for that.”

Darcy commemorates these memories, in part, with an array of colorful pins decorating her backpack. Her favorite is a yellow boxing glove, stamped in pink letters. It reads: “NEVER GIVE UP.”

If Darcy could offer advice to other young people battling cancer, it would be just that — “just keep pushing through.”

“Try not to think of yourself as a sick child or just as sick,” Darcy said. “Think of yourself as, ‘Oh, I’m myself. I’m me, and this is just a small part of me.’ If you just keep pushing, you can feel better about yourself.”

Then she added one more thing: “And people. Have good people around you. It’s real helpful.”

This story was originally published December 17, 2025 at 5:30 AM.