'I can do this': Colfax boys basketball coach Reece Jenkin faces pancreatic cancer diagnosis with hope, gratitude
Led by coach Reece Jenkin, the Colfax boys basketball program has been among the best in the region.
A former standout player at Reardan and later with Whitworth University, Jenkin has amassed more than 300 coaching wins with the Bulldogs, eight consecutive state tournament appearances, and state titles in 2012 and ’24.
This season, his 18th in Colfax, started off like all the others – with a rigorous nonleague schedule filled with teams from higher classifications in order to prepare his Bulldogs for the grind of league play, with the ultimate goal of playing on the Saturday of State B at the Spokane Arena.
Expectations were heightened for the 2025-26 season, though, with his oldest son – two-time defending Northeast 2B South league MVP Adrik Jenkin – entering his senior year.
But Jenkin had been feeling run down during the fall, including some unexplained weight loss, insomnia and back pain. He thought he was dealing with some emotional stress, anxiety or maybe even depression over Adrik’s impending graduation and college decision, and he sought treatment for that.
The basketball season started and he felt no relief.
“I was struggling to get through practices, to get through games,” he said.
The Bulldogs beat 3A Central Valley on Dec. 6. Jenkin “celebrated” by throwing up in a locker-room trash can.
Then Dec. 11 came.
He and his wife, Breanne, decided a visit to his physician was appropriate, which led to blood work and a CT scan. He went home thinking it would be a few days until he heard back with test results.
An hour later the doctor’s office called, but Jenkin didn’t pick up. Breanne – who is the manager of provider support at the clinic – tried to reach her husband, but again no answer. He wasn’t feeling well after the tests and had turned his phone off to nap.
After seeing all the missed calls, Jenkin called his wife to see if she knew why they wanted him to come right back.
“You need to go, now,” she told him. “Please just come back up here so they can explain it to you.”
“Can’t you just tell me?” he pleaded.
Eventually, Breanne relented.
“It’s cancer.”
News ‘no one wants’
Pancreatic cancer. Stage 4. Inoperable. And it had already metastasized to his liver.
Given her position with the clinic, the provider came directly to Breanne as soon as they received the test results.
“It obviously caught me off guard,” she said. “I broke down in tears. Cried a lot. (The provider) sat there for a little bit and explained some stuff to prepare me. They asked if I wanted to be the one to call Reece, and I said, ‘No. I do not want to make the call.’ ”
Unfortunately, it happened that way anyway.
It’s hard enough to hear your spouse has a life-threatening condition, let alone be the one who has to deliver the news.
“I can’t even remember everything that I felt, because it kind of just rocked my world,” Breanne said. “I didn’t know what to do, what to think, or how to go about anything. I just wanted him to be OK.”
After the initial consult, the doctors quickly arranged a meeting with specialists in Spokane to get Jenkin’s treatment schedule set up as fast as possible.
“ ‘This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to get chemo going. We’re going to hit it really hard,’ ” Jenkin recalled the conversation with the specialist. “She’s like, ‘You’re young. We’re going to try to get going on this as fast as possible. … I kinda walked out of there a little bit shaken, but also on a mission of, ‘Let’s get going.’ ”
Looking back, Jenkin said, the words were all sort of “a blur.”
“I’m fairly healthy, fairly young, right?” said Jenkin, who is 45. “This was never anything I would ever have expected. That first 24 hours is really kind of a blur. It was just like, ‘Oh my gosh. What does this mean?’ The first time you hear cancer, you don’t think anything positive. No one wants to hear that.”
It’s been barely four weeks since the initial diagnosis, and “it’s still hard to process,” Breanne said.
“There’s days that Reece feels good, and you’re like, ‘Oh, everything’s fine.’ And then there’s days where he doesn’t, and it kind of hits you like a ton of bricks – that it’s real. Then there’s days that I’m like, ‘This is a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.’ ”
Family plan
The Jenkins have been careful explaining the situation with their three children – Adrik, 17; Allie, a 15-year-old freshman; and Ryker, a 12-year-old seventh grader. They want their kids to understand what’s going on – but they also want to protect them from the harsh reality.
“That first night, Ryker had a junior high basketball game, and we came (home),” Jenkin explained. “Bre’s family was here, and my family was here, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna be strong. I’m just gonna tell them, and everything’s gonna be OK.’ And it was a lot harder than I anticipated.”
Maybe as parents they haven’t been quite as transparent with their kids from the very beginning with all of the information they’ve been given from Jenkin’s care team, but they also understand their kids are all old enough to appreciate the severity of the situation. There’s been no talk of timelines, or eventualities – only that the doctors are going to do everything they can to treat Reece and give him the best chance they can to get better.
But they are also all old enough to ask questions of their own and access the internet, which is something Reece and Breanne have wanted to avoid.
“It’s hard because, you know, they hear adults speak everywhere,” Breanne said.
“I don’t even know if I even comprehend ‘Stage 4’ to an extent of what it means, because the doctors have never really gone into detail – and we’ve never asked,” Jenkin said. “It’s just been, ‘Here’s the things you need to try to do to get better.’ ”
But the kids all know that their father has some difficult days ahead of him.
“We did a first round of chemo and we’re gonna keep doing it,” Jenkin said. “After the fourth round, (the doctors) will look through and kind of see if the combinations of chemo are working, or if they need to change something up. So, I think our kids have a pretty good idea and I think they have a much better perspective now.”
“We’re just going to fight,” Breanne said.
“Day by day,” Jenkin finished the sentence. “And appreciate every day that we have.”
A little normal
The Spokane region basketball community is tight-knit. It’s no surprise that news of Jenkin’s diagnosis spread rapidly. And the outpouring of support – in its depth and breadth – has been propping up Jenkin and his family since the news broke.
“Everything has been super overwhelming in such a positive way,” Jenkin said. “I just want everyone to know how thankful I am, and how grateful I am. I try to respond, and I think I respond for the most part, to most messages, but just know how much it all has meant to me. I know I have different prayer circles praying for me. It’s a crappy situation, but I have so much to be grateful for.”
Jenkin was receiving “literally hundreds” of text messages a day to start. The notes came from across the region and state. They’ve come from parents and community members. And they’ve come from former players that he hasn’t heard from in over a decade.
”You don’t realize it until something like this happens,” Jenkin said of the support he’s received. “You kind of take it for granted. I don’t know what the right word is, but it’s definitely special.”
Over the past few weeks, teams across the area have been having “purple nights” in support of Jenkin. Pancreatic cancer is represented by the color purple, symbolizing awareness, dignity, hope and perseverance against this aggressive disease.
Jenkin’s high school alma mater, Reardan, is having a purple night on Saturday when the team hosts Newport – with the hope of generating awareness and contributions to the charitable webpage set up for Jenkin and his family.
Colfax was scheduled to play West Valley in the Eagle Holiday Tournament between Christmas and New Year’s, plans made before the diagnosis. It was an intriguing matchup between two quality programs featuring coaches and administrators involved with the Hooptown Elite program.
It turned into something more.
After Jenkin’s first treatment, he had to miss a couple of games in recovery – including the Bulldogs’ first game of the holiday tournament on Dec. 27. But he found enough strength to return that Monday for a pregame moment honoring him and his cancer fight.
“I told my assistant, ‘Hey, I’m just here to help. I’m going to try to do whatever I can,’ ” Jenkin said. “And then when I get there, and you get some fans, and I get around my team – this is a special group with me, obviously, with my son being a senior – and I was like, for a couple or hours I can forget about everything else and just, you know, be normal.”
So there he was, crouched on the sideline for the Bulldogs’ 65-36 win – calling out plays and defenses, and even pulling players aside when they needed a little bit of one-on-one instruction.
“The adrenaline of being around it all of a sudden, I just got a little bit extra energy,” he said.
“It was nice to see him coaching, because that’s normal,” Breanne said. “That’s what supposed to be happening. It felt like an everyday game, watching him out there coaching, hearing his voice, you know, yelling. It was nice to hear.”
“He’s been coaching this group of kids since we’re in third grade,” Adrik said. “And to have him pushing us to where we’re at now, seeing him seeing us be successful, makes us happy, makes him happy. … (The diagnosis) was a pretty big thing to process at first, obviously, but it’s kind of brought us all closer. We have something to play for when he’s not there. And even when he’s not there, we know he’s here with us spiritually.”
A basketball community
“I’ve gotten to know Reece very well over the last five, six years, and grew really close to him and his family,” West Valley athletic director and Hooptown Elite director Jamie Nilles said. “You know, it’s a lot of the same story lines of being a high school coach and all the time and effort you put into young kids lives is super important, and he’s one of the best around.”
“When we set this up a couple months ago, it was for a couple buddies that travel around all summer coaching travel hoops to play against each other. It wasn’t for this situation,” West Valley coach Mike Hamilton said. “But, yeah, we just tried to make it as special of a night as we could for an incredible human being and somebody that we’re all pulling for.”
Most of the Hooptown Elite coaching roster was there, in matching black T-shirts with the word “Fight” and a purple ribbon with “Reece” inscripted on the ribbon.
Vince Grippi has known Jenkin for a long time. As a former reporter at The Spokesman-Review, Grippi covered Jenkin in high school, during his college career, and in Jenkin’s early days as a high school coach. The two are now on the Hooptown Elite staff.
“I think the word I would use to describe Reece would be ‘genuine,’ ” Grippi said. “You know, a lot of people seem really nice and seem on the surface to be really cool, caring people. But Reece really is … The one thing I think kids really respect more anything right now is honesty. Sometimes it can be tough to accept, but when your coach is really honest, and Reece is really honest, they know that you love them and they’re going to listen and learn from it.”
Ryan Peplinski, the athletic director and longtime boys basketball coach at league-rival St. George’s, applauds Jenkin’s approach as well.
“In my time playing against Colfax, the route to state usually came through one of us or maybe another team in our league,” Peplinski said. “(Jenkin) does it the right way. … He’s just great dad, a great family man, and you can see by the amount of support he’s gotten, he’s a good friend and great mentor to the kids.”
Brett Ward, another Hooptown Elite coach, is also the boys basketball coach at Medical Lake. His father, Keith Ward, was the baseball coach at Whitworth when Jenkin played.
”I remember going to those games and hearing ‘Reece Jenkin’ over the speaker as he was hitting 3s,” Ward said. “I told him when I saw him, ‘This turnout wouldn’t happen for everybody. This is a testament to who you are and the way that you treat people and the way that you interact with people.’ “
Both teams, the officials, and dozens of coaches gathered at midcourt for a pregame photo. Hugs and handshakes took 10 minutes to settle before the game could get going.
“I was emotional, just with the support and the outpouring of love that we got,” Jenkin said.
“The relationship that Reece has with those coaches is real,” Breanne said. “They have that bond. I’m sure it was hard, but at the same time, that’s one of their really good friends that is walking a really crummy road right now, and so they just wanted to be there and support him.”
“That’s the thing I’ve noticed more than anything else,” Reece said. “I just would have never known that all that support is out there. After that first chemo I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a lot harder than what I thought.’ But then I saw all that love and support at West Valley and you’re like, ‘I can do this. I can do this.’ ”
If you would like to participate in the fundraising effort for Reece Jenkin and his family, please visit gofundme.com/f/support-reeces-fight-against-pancreatic-cancer.