ADAMS TWP — For the past few Octobers, Amy Berkopec has helped the Mars volleyball team host annual “Pink Planet” nights.

The fundraising events are held at home volleyball games, with the team donning pink uniforms and proceeds donated to breast cancer awareness and research organizations. With Berkopec’s daughter, Isabelle, on the team, she felt volunteering was a way to give back and bring the team and community together.

Now, that same team and community are coming together to benefit Berkopec’s daughter, Brie Lee, who was recently diagnosed with leukemia.

The seventh incarnation of Pink Planet Night is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, when Mars takes on Knoch High School. However, instead of donning pink, the team will take the court in orange — the universal color for leukemia patients and survivors.

Lee, a 30-year-old mother of two, played softball for four years while at Mars. Earlier this summer, she fought for weeks with a sore throat that wouldn’t go away.

A battery of tests later, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She showed no other signs or symptoms of the disease, Berkopec said.

“She was the picture of health,” she said of Lee. “It went that quick from a sore throat to cancer. Your whole life gets switched upside down.”

Since the diagnosis, Lee has undergone rounds of treatment, and at one point did not get to see her children — Ava, 2, and Laila, 10 months — for three weeks. Doctors began searching for a marrow match from an international database.

However, they had no luck in that pursuit, and running out of options, members of the Berkopec family sought to see if they could help — a Hail Mary of sorts.

That long-shot landed closer to home than they expected, as Berkopec’s son, Ken, a 2008 Mars graduate, was found to be a match. Of 10 factors that determine how successful a donation will be, Ken and Brie matched on all 10.

Ken Berkopec said he and his siblings are “thick as thieves,” continuing their close relationships into adulthood. He said that bond made the decision to go through with the donation transplant an easy one.

“There was no question I was going to be her match and do whatever I had to do,” he said. “We’re very lucky our family stayed close and involved in each other’s lives. We drop everything and help out each other when the need comes.”

“He gets the privilege of saving his sister’s life,” Amy Berkopec said, adding the family is hopeful a transplant will be done late this month or early November. “He said it well: This family doesn’t fight alone and cancer isn’t anything that anybody can fight alone, no matter how strong you are.”

Amy Berkopec said in the time since the diagnosis the Mars community has been supportive, with people reaching out and offering to help however they can. That includes Mars volleyball coach Tami Caraway, who decided to change the pink theme to orange in honor of Lee and the Berkopec family.

She said the pink initiative began when players on the team were dealing with family members battling cancer, and the fundraising event was a way to support them. With the Berkopec family’s closeness to the team over the years, it was an easy call to make the switch.

“The thing about cancer is that it touches just about everybody,” Caraway said. “There’s a thing about high school sports that links us together as a community, and this gives us an opportunity to do that.”

Amy Berkopec said the chance to promote awareness of the disease, as well as the donor swab initiative that eventually led to finding a match for Lee.

“It could save a life,” she said.

In addition to the game, the team will be selling shirts designed by Lee at the event. The shirt features an orange ribbon and a Wonder Woman logo, as Lee’s daughter often refers to her mother as the superhero.

Berkopec added the game coincides with Thursday’s Leukemia and Lymphoma Society walk on Pittsburgh’s North Shore, in which the family will participate. Isabelle Berkopec will also join with her college softball team at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama to host a related event.

The amount of support and help has been overwhelming for the everyone, Berkopec said.

“Words cannot describe the outpouring of concern,” Amy Berkopec said. “It’s scary, but the part that’s not so scary is how many people that are there to say ‘how can I help.’”