3v3 hoops tournament helps keep former Wildwood Catholic standout’s spirit alive

Posted: November 11th 2023

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

CAPE MAY – Approximately 75 youth and adult basketball players turned out on a beautiful Indian Summer day recently to honor and remember one of the area’s best high school basketball players of her generation.

NextGen30, a charitable foundation created in honor of former Wildwood Catholic High School (now Wildwood Catholic Academy) basketball standout Genny Farnan, hosted its first annual 3-on-3 basketball tournament on Oct. 28 at Cape May’s Kiwanis Park.

Teams ranging in age from fifth- and sixth-graders through adults competed in various divisions at the all-day event played on a beautiful fall day, with temperatures in the mid 70s.

“It was like a summer day,” said Ashley Peoples, Genny’s sister and one of the organizers of the event.

Farnan graduated from Wildwood Catholic in 2005, scoring 1,025 career points in basketball. She later graduated from Rowan University with a bachelor's degree in health and exercise science. Farnan passed away at age 29 in 2016 after a two-year battle with brain cancer.

NextGen30 was created to honor Farnan’s memory. Its mission statement, according to its website, is “to perform 30 acts of kindness annually in the communities that Genevieve Farnan loved, prioritizing the health and education of young people in the Cape May County community.”

The 3-on-3 basketball tournament seemed a perfect way to do just that, Peoples said.

“Genny was very much into youth health. She wanted to be a gym teacher, and she was a basketball player,” Peoples said. “We wanted to do something community oriented to get kids out hooping on a Saturday afternoon. It’s definitely something Genny would have loved. We’ll try to kind of grow it from here.”

GENNY FARNAN

NextGen30 previously donated $5,000 to the City of Cape May to help with upgrades to Kiwanis Park, including improvements at the park’s basketball court. Cape May mayor Zack Mullock was on hand at the Oct. 28 event to dedicate a plaque honoring Farnan that will be posted at the park.

Most of Farnan’s immediate family was in attendance at the event. Her father, Paul, who now resides in Florida, even pulled on a referee’s shirt to help officiate some of the games. He was once a longtime respected South Jersey high school basketball official.

Peoples said the tournament did not serve as a fundraiser for NextGen30 but instead was “something we focused on just to really make a great event for the community.

“It went above and beyond what we were expecting,” Peoples added. “We didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. We kind of had low registration leading up to the event but then we got bombarded that day with people turning out, which was great.”

Peoples credited Kacie Rattigan and David Scheffler of the City of Cape May for offering major support for the event.

“They were amazing because they provided everything we needed,” she said. “We just had to organize the volunteers and the refs and set up the brackets.”

For Peoples, her family and the rest of the volunteers, running the basketball tournament was a rather rewarding venture.

“For us, we just want to get out there as a family and do community outreach and extend that mission of staying healthy, keeping the body and mind sharp and giving back to the community whenever we can because that’s what Genny did,” she said. “She went to the gym, she kept going to school and she donated her time back to a bunch of foundations and charities when she had free time. Doing this helps us stay close to her and it helps keep her memory very much alive.”

NextGen30 is set to host its largest annual fundraiser on Friday, Nov. 17, from 6 to 10 p.m. at Carney’s in Cape May. Tickets, which are $30, can be purchased at any deSatnick Real Estate officer or at the door on the evening of the event.