HENDERSONVILLE − Visitors entering Beech High School on Feb. 21 were reminded immediately that this night's Tennessee high school basketball playoff games were about way more than basketball.
Sitting atop a black table where patrons paid their way to see Lebanon face Green Hill in a District 7-4A semifinal was a chance to pay tribute to Jayden Bailey, the 17-year-old Lebanon basketball player who died Feb. 19 after a nearly four-year battle with cancer.
On a sheet of white paper, 8½ x 11 inches in size, was a picture of a beaming Bailey. He was holding a basketball in his right hand, the fresh scar on his left shoulder from his recent arm amputation visible, too.
"Support Jayden Bailey's Cancer Battle" the paper read in big, black letters. A QR code linking to a GoFundMe page set up to help his family with Bailey's medical costs was there too.
"I felt his presence as soon as we started out walkthrough," said Lebanon senior Marques Anglin after his team's 46-44 district tournament semifinal victory, where he scored 18 points. "He's been with us the whole time, and he's going to continue to be with us."
Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.
'He was a hooper, you hear me?'
The Lebanon boys basketball team was on a bus ride to Beech on Feb. 19 when coach Jim McDowell received the news that Bailey had died.
It was around 4 p.m. His team had a game in a few hours.
There was no way they weren't going to play.
Why?
Because of Jayden Bailey.
"The last game that he dressed (in mid-December), he came straight from Vanderbilt Hospital, getting his stomach drained, ran in the gym to get dressed to be with the team," McDowell said Feb. 21. "He was a hooper, man, you hear me?
"He loved basketball."
So much so that after having his left arm amputated in August, and having cancer strike him again, this time in the stomach, in October, Bailey still suited and played for the Blue Devils.
So much so that after missing a season after he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, in June 2022, he returned undaunted and undeterred.
"I knew the word cancer was huge, but it never really scared me as much as I'm sure it scared my mom and my family," Bailey told The Tennessean last November. "People tell me all the time — it's crazy — they can never tell if I'm down or anything.
"I genuinely believe once you get down on yourself, you're not going to come back from that. You're going to be in a dark place all the time."
'He just had a smile on his head at all times'
On this night, two days after Bailey died, his teammates got down against Green Hill. But they bounced back.
They bounced back, because Bailey was there, too.
Those who weren't playing in the game wore gold T-shirts that read "Play for Jayden" across the front. Cheerleaders and coaches wore yellow ribbons in Bailey's honor.
The marquee on the front of the scorers' table periodically flashed an image of that same ribbon featuring Bailey's initials.
"Beech, they'v been nothing but first-class, as far as honoring him and wanting to make his presence felt," McDowell said.
Lebanon junior Amaure Manier, who has been friends with Bailey since preschool, said the team won the last two for their friend.
"I know he wanted us to do it," Manier said. "He just had a smile on his head at all times, no matter what he was going through. ... When you see a kid like him, going through what he went through, and still out there playing ... "
Manier stopped.
The smile on his face finished his sentence for him.
It was put there, he said, by Bailey.
Paul Skrbina is a sports enterprise reporter covering the Predators, Titans, Nashville SC, local colleges and local sports for The Tennessean. Reach him at [email protected] and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @paulskrbina.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jayden Bailey remembered by Lebanon basketball team, Beech High after death