A family that creates the right mood in the air can make a band box feel more like a mansion. To know Kansas University volleyball coach Ray Bechard is to suspect the small home in tiny, rural Grinnell he shared with his parents and six siblings felt plenty roomy.

“Three bedrooms, one bathroom, about 1,200 square feet,” he said of the home. “We thought we had it pretty good growing up.”

A tape measure is not the right tool to use to determine whether a house blossoms into a home that comforts, nurtures and secures the minds of those who dwell in it.

The Bechards of Grinnell had a daughter, followed by five sons and then another daughter. When Don Bechard was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and two years later died in September of 2008, it rocked the family’s world.

Today’s 6:30 p.m. KU volleyball match against Iowa State won’t be just another night at Horejsi for more reasons than the Cyclones’ No. 10 national ranking.

It’s one of a series of Jayhawks for a Cure events designed to raise awareness and money to fight cancer. Customers wearing pink will be admitted for $3. For Ray Bechard, it’s another way to remember his brother, Don, a lifelong coach who starred in multiple sports and excelled in the classroom in high school.

“Don always found the kid in the hall who was lost and didn’t have much direction,” Ray said. “That’s who would become his team manager.”

While looking out for the underdog, Don Bechard won enough to become the first coach to win a Kansas state championship in both volleyball (Manhattan High, 1987) and basketball (Gardner-Edgerton, 1996).

Don’s basketball state title came when one of his players made a free throw with no time left on the clock.

“That was a thrill for me to see that,” Ray said. “The next day we watched the Jayhawks win a Big 8 championship, so that was a good couple of days for us.”

The Bechards grew up as “diehard Jayhawk fans,” Ray said, not so fond of the color purple that surrounded them.

“We saw Jo Jo White play in ’66 on a black-and-white TV and watched the ’69 Orange Bowl on TV,” Ray remembered. “We loved the Jayhawks, and we loved listening to the St. Louis Cardinals on the radio.”

Don not only made his brothers proud, he took great pride in watching his brother coach volleyball, watching Ray’s son Brennan as a basketball walk-on for Kansas and reading brother Harold’s newspaper accounts of various KU sporting events.

Five months before moving onto his eternal reward, Don couldn’t bring himself to say no to his youngest daughter when she begged him to go to the Final Four.

“He was not in very good shape and lay in the back of a Suburban all the way to San Antonio,” Ray said. “That Sunday between the two games, they checked him into the hospital. He was back out and there for the (title game). He didn’t move around much until Mario’s shot went in. Then he jumped a foot off the ground.”

Mario’s Miracle didn’t save Don Bechard’s life, but it did enrich his painful, premature sendoff.