Girls softball teams hit a homer for TBBCF in memory of Aimee Reed
By KATHLEEN EDGECOMB
A wave of support rolled into the Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation last 
October from the Aimee Reed Memorial Classic Softball Tournament.
The annual girls’ sporting event, hosted by Waves Softball in Rhode Island, attracted 22 teams, more than 200 players, and raised $4,750 for TBBCF, nearly doubling its previous annual donations.
“Oh, I think Aimee would be smiling now, “ said Maria Morin, Reed’s former college softball coach and the director of Waves Softball. “She would be beaming ear to ear.”
The first tournament was held in 2016, and for two years, Aimee Reed received a donation to help defray medical and other expenses while being treated for breast cancer. When she died from the disease in 2018, Morin vowed to continue the tournament and donate the proceeds to the Brodeur Foundation, where Reed had been the honorary 2016 walk chair and chronicled her journey in a series of blogs on the foundation’s website and social media platforms.
“This foundation does such good things, and Aimee spoke so highly of those involved,” Morin said. “The poor girl battled for her life every day, I thought, we could do a tournament to help.”
Being part of a team was important to Reed, who played softball in high school and for Morin at Rhode Island College. Morin said her former player loved softball and loved bonding with her teammates. She would confide in some of them about her life’s struggles and thrived on the support they gave her, she said.Â
 Charity Tournament Winners
Sandy Maniscalco, co-founder of the foundation, said Reed was an inspiration in the way she handled herself as she waged a four-year battle with breast cancer.
“Always with a smile on her face or a joke to share even at the last hours of life,” 
Maniscalco said last October during closing ceremonies of the tournament. “Aimee’s spirit gives us courage to keep up the fight in the belief that research will discover a cure or better treatments for breast cancer so women, and young women especially, do not have to go through what she endured.”
Morin, a middle school teacher in West Greenwich. R.I., said she is already planning the 2022 tournament and some teams have already signed up.
“We’ll go full speed ahead in the fall,” she said, adding that she hopes to expand the tournament and make an even larger donation to TBBCF.
Maniscalco said she will be volunteering at next year’s two-day tournament.
As she said after last year’s event:
       “Aimee’s spirit gives us courage to keep up the fight in the belief that research will discover a cure or better treatments for breast cancer so women, and young women especially, do not have to go through what she endured. Thank you again. See you next year.”