When Erin Potts completed her first round of chemotherapy in October 2007, dozens lined the street with candles and banners to welcome the LaGrange resident home. A touching moment of solidarity, an inspiring moment of support, said those who were there, most members of St. Cletus Parish in LaGrange. In the trying years that followed, the St. Cletus community’s support remained for Potts and her family, as the teen continued to battle Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer affecting the body’s bone and soft tissue. Parish and St. Cletus School families brought dinners to the Potts’ home, decorated the family’s residence with Christmas lights and offered regular prayers. After all, Erin Potts, the youngest of David and Mary Potts’ four children, was one of their own. “They say it takes a village to raise a child, but we’re a little unique in St. Cletus. We say it’s more like a parish,” St. Cletus parishioner Katie Frisbie said. On Dec. 18, 2009, three years after the initial cancer diagnosis and roughly one month after doctors discovered a brain tumor, Potts passed away at age 18. A standout volleyball player at Lyons Township High School until the cancer forced her to the sidelines following her sophomore year, Potts continues inspiring and the St. Cletus Parish continues responding. On Feb. 6-7, St. Cletus hosted the inaugural Erin Potts Invitational, a seventh and eighth grade volleyball tournament that drew more than 15 teams, 175 participants and 100 volunteers to the LaGrange school’s gym. The event, which donated its proceeds to the Sarcoma Alliance in Potts’ name, recognized the teen’s passion for volleyball and the parish’s commitment to unity. “There was a real love of the game that Erin brought to the court,” said Frisbie, one of the event’s co-organizers. “This is but another way for this community to help out, support Erin’s memory and create a successful event that honors her name.” Tina Pryor, a physical education teacher at St. Cletus and one of the tournament’s organizers, recalls Potts as one of the most talented, enthusiastic volleyball players she had ever seen. “Erin was very motivated to win. You could see it on her face when the team lost a point or a match that they should have won. She really took the sport to heart,” Pryor said. It’s that dedicated spirit, that pursuit of accomplishment that Frisbie, Pryor, and the tournament’s other coordinators, Angela Franklin and Sue Rejdukowski, hope event participants took home. “It’s important for us that these girls have a sense of who Erin was and to know of her life, the strong relationships she established with people and the strength she showed,” Frisbie said. “Erin was who every kid should hope to be.” After graduating from Lyons Township High School in 2009, Potts began attending Elmhurst College with hopes of earning a nursing degree, a pursuit prompted by her desire to help others wrestling illness. By October, she was too ill to attend classes. Through it all, however, Potts’ spirit and the St. Cletus community’s support rarely wavered. A life lived with grace and dignity in the face of adversity, Potts has fueled the West suburban parish and school to continue their long-held insistence on collaboration and kinship. At Potts’ funeral on Dec. 23, the church and funeral home were decorated with snowflakes made and sent to Potts by St. Cletus students. On Jan. 28, the seventh and eighth grade volleyball teams at St. Cletus held a serve-a-thon to raise funds for the Invitational and the Sarcoma Alliance. “This was a girl and a family that this parish really rallied around, and with good reason — Erin was a special person,” Pryor said.