As Cinderellas go, High Point would need 10 pounds of memory foam to fill Ed DeCourcey’s glass slippers.
You see, some three years ago, Ed, a CSU Rams fan from Windsor, landed one of the absolute worst draws imaginable in the Bracket of Life. Fifteen seed. Cancer Region.
, was a scrappy mid-major going on his second decade of retirement. He was a 20-point underdog against prostate cancer in the first round. He was a 15-point ‘dog against bladder cancer in the second. Kidney failure was an 11-point favorite at the Sweet 16.
“When you get it (from the) left, then the right, then a gut punch, you don’t know what the future’s going to hold,” DeCourcey recalled to me me earlier in this week.
“You don’t know if some (tumor) going to come back somewhere else. It’s a lot of unknowns. (You) can respond one of two ways. I was going the wrong way.”
Bladder cancer had started to have his way with him in the spring of 2023. Ed was too exhausted from the treatments to get the ball up the court. When he did, it felt as if there was always a tumor in his face. Cancer never likes to give you more than one shot during a possession.
“I was pretty down,” DeCourcey continued. “I thought, ‘Do I even want to live?'”
During a timeout one day, Ed checked his mail. In it was a card with CSU green and gold insignia everywhere. As a Rams women’s basketball season ticket-holder for about a decade, he was pretty sure what he was going to find inside.
Only he was wrong. Ed opened up a buzzer-beater, a half-court shot that tickled the twine of his soul, a card personally signed by CSU guard Hannah Ronsiek that read:
ED, THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT! WE WANT TO SEE YOU AROUND AGAIN!
“It kind of uplifted me a little bit, made me feel a lot better,” DeCourcey recalled. “That changed my attitude and all that stuff around.
“I said, ‘Oh, man, I don’t want to give up yet.’ It made me feel that I wanted to stick around.”
He’s glad he did. Ed’s 78, wry and spry, walking with a cane and a smile these days. His beloved Rams won 22 games a year ago. On Friday, coach Ryun Williams’ 27-7 crew, your 2026 Mountain West tourney champs, will play at the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade, facing off against fifth-seeded Michigan State.
“They’re fast,” Ed said of these Rams, whom he says are the best team Williams has ever put together in FoCo. “They share the ball. Remember when (that) Michael Jordan (documentary) was on TV? And they asked (his Bulls teammates), ‘What would you do when it came down to crunch time?’ And they’d say, ‘Get the ball to Michael and get out of the way.’ You don’t see any of that (with CSU). They always make the right pass, the right play.”
Ed was one of several cancer survivors CSU honored at the Rams’ annual “Fight Like a Ram” game back in January. In a celebration of life, faith and hope, Williams’ players wore the names of cancer survivors — cancer warriors — on the backs of their respective jerseys. DeCourcey was repped by freshman guard Allie Roden, who’d lost her uncle to cancer three years earlier.
Buoyed by these Rams, Ed did what you’ve got to do to win in March — he rebounded. Both cancers were fading by 2024. At the start of 2025, DeCourcey had regained 85% of this strength, which was as good as he’d felt in years.
In fact, Ed had enough juice again to start bringing doughnuts to preseason practice, with Williams’ permission, two Septembers ago. These days, the Rams know Doughnut Day is coming and make requests. Last summer, guard Lexus Bargesser, who’d just transferred in from Indiana, mentioned to Ed that she suddenly had a hankering for a cherry Bismark.
Fast forward to September 2025. Ed turned up with boxes of doughnuts, as per usual. Only at the end of practice, Williams stopped Bargesser before she could join the line and dig in.
“I got doughnuts for everybody except Lexie,” DeCourcey said.
“Yeah, her defense hasn’t been that great,” Williams dead-panned, trying not to wink at Ed.
While Williams was feigning tough love, Ed ambled up with a bag in his mitts and handed said bag to Bargesser. She opened it.
Cherry Bismark. As requested.
“You told me you wanted a cherry Bismark,” DeCourcey said. “So here it is.”
Welcome to the Ramily.
And to think: DeCourcey became a CSU booster largely by kismet. A man had moved in his neighborhood, just down the street, a guy who regularly wore CSU gear while out mowing the lawn or working on his backyard.
Ed stopped by one day to compliment the man on his patio and ask what had brought him to FoCo. Ryun Williams introduced himself to DeCourcey as the new women’s hoops coach at CSU. He invited Ed and his wife to check out a game. They did. They got hooked.
“We used to go to theater in Denver a lot and we stopped going,” Ed said. “We got season tickets (to CSU) and switched our whole plan … ‘”Jersey Boys” again? We’ve seen all those (shows). Let’s switch it up for a while.’ I thought we could always go back if we wanted to.”
That was 14 years ago. They never switched back. Willams has since won 281 games at CSU, notching 10 seasons of at least 20 victories, made two NCAA tourneys and played in six WNITs. Ed moved out of that neighborhood and into an independent-living facility in Windsor a few years back after the cancer sapped his balance and mobility. But they’ve remained friends.
He’s never lost the faith, though, and the bracketologists think he might need it against the Spartans.
The Spartans will be the first “Quad 1” foe, officially, CSU has faced all season; the Rams were 1-2 against “Quad 2” foes.
The Rams will also be playing without their leading scorer and offensive linchpin, Bargesser (15.2 points per game, 5.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists per game), and jumping into the Octagon with a Big Ten team without your former Big Ten guard is less than ideal. Bargesser suffered a non-contact injury against UNLV in the Mountain West tourney semis that ended her season.
That’s an awful lot of bismarks to make up for in the Big Dance, which might be one reason the oddsmakers aren’t terribly impressed with the Rams’ chances. BetMGM.com earlier this week pegged CSU as an 18.5-point underdog, which is the second-largest point spread among the bracket’s four 5-12 matchups.
Vegas sees a long shot.
Ed? Ed sees a miracle.
“They’ve still got some pretty good players. But who knows?” DeCourcey noted. “If they get hot from the 3-point line and they get Michigan State in foul trouble, that could happen. We’ll see.
“Hey, these kids are tough.”
Ed would know. DeCourcey’s sister is a retired nurse. After he knocked off two cancers and kidney issues, she sent him a little bobblehead of the superhero Iron Man with a note that read, ‘You’re an Iron Man.’
“(Williams) is always talking about it: ‘You guys, just so you know, that little thing for (the team), that card, became a big thing for (DeCourcey),'” Ed recalled. “Ryun talks about the little things making a difference. Don’t ever underestimate that little things can make a difference.”
Or save a life. It’s March. Survive and advance, baby. Survive and advance.
