Athletes get elite coaching at clinic; Oakdale graduate gets help with his medical expenses

OAKDALE -- Jared Bliss can handle a basketball with the best of them, but he'd like to be a better baseball and football player.

The 13-year-old will get the opportunity to improve in all three sports, and support a good cause, Saturday when he takes part in the "Pray for Jay" sports clinic.

"I'll pick up tips on each sport, which should be more fun than a clinic that's all about basketball or baseball," said Jared, whose father John Bliss is the boys basketball coach at Buhach Colony in Atwater. "I'm always looking to learn something new that will make me a better ballplayer."

Jared and his brother, 11-year-old Nathan, will be among the kids paying $30 each for the four-hour event at Oakdale High.

The money will help Jason Turnage cover the cost of his fight against colon cancer. The sports angle was a natural, organizer Nate Rien said, because Turnage owns Apparel Graphics and has helped outfit thousands of Northern San Joaquin Valley athletes.

"Having grown up in Oakdale, you can always count on people to rally during a time of need," said Turnage, a 1991 graduate who played football. "There's a special atmosphere in small towns, a sense we're all in it together."

Saturday's activities include a silent auction and raffle, a coffee bar with pastries and a barbecue by Medlen's House of Beef. It starts with registration at 8 a.m., clinics and auctions from 9 to noon, and then lunch.

Oakdale coach Trent Merzon, who led the Mustangs to a state Division III crown last fall, will lead the football clinic. Hondo Arpoika, who coached Oakdale to back-to-back section baseball crowns, and Rien -- the Columbia College men's basketball coach -- will lead the others.

Turnage will help out, even as he continues to battle his cancer.

"I'm going through chemotherapy, but the outcome's still up in the air," the 35-year-old father of three said. "I'm reading up on colon cancer and I've found a lot of people who have overcome it."

When colon cancer is detected early, as it was with Turnage, the survival rate is four to five times greater than late-stage cancers, according to medical research.

For more information on the clinics and silent auction, call 847-5130.

Bee staff writer Richard T. Estrada can be reached at restrada@modbee.com or 578-2304.