By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
ARGOS — While Argos basketball coach Joel Grindle and Triton boss Jason Groves conspired how to get the upper hand on the basketball floor Tuesday, they and their teams have been conspiring on how to win another competition around the game.

The only thing for sure in the outcome is that 11-year-old Argos fifth grader Evan Johnson was going to come out a winner.
Evan suffers from advanced cancer, and both teams used Tuesday’s game to raise money for he and parents, Bruce and Carrie Johnson, as they continue to help their son in his fight with the disease.
Evan’s relative, Andy Knepp of Bourbon — along with other family members — came up with the idea and approached both coaches about selling raffle tickets as a fundraiser when the schools match up on the court.
“Andy came and talked to our team about it and our kids were definitely behind it,” said Groves, of the Trojans’ reaction to the competition to raise money for Evan. “I know that he suggested maybe a pizza party as a reward for the team that raised the most money, but we told him that we didn’t need any incentive to get behind this. Anything we can do to help, we want to do.”
“With the size of our school, our high school kids see the elementary kids every day on the way to lunch or wherever,” said Grindle. “We’re a pretty tight-knit group at Argos and there are many people who’ve been impacted by Evan. Whenever you have a chance to help out in this kind of a situation, it really puts a lot of things in a different perspective.”
“I’ve had a lot of our kids calling me asking for extra raffle tickets to sell,” said Groves. “About every other day I get a text from one of our players giving ideas on other things we can do to help out. Our kids are really behind this.”
“Evan has family at both schools so it makes it a perfect fit,” said Grindle. “We just feel fortunate that we were given an opportunity to do something.”
It also gave both coaches a chance to focus on things other than the score board.
“It’s fun for us to play basketball,” said Groves. “You see people going through tough times and it lets you focus more on what you can do to help and how fortunate you are to be able to do something that’s fun and still help somebody out.”
“Our kids work hard on the court but we have kids that are good leaders in the community and in our school,” said Grindle. “This lets them show that they are more than just basketball players. This is a big deal to them.”