Moments before tipoff on Friday night, Kyle Woodyard blows two short puffs of air into his cupped hands and points to the heavens.

It’s a ritual the Ypsilanti High School senior has carried out before every Phoenix basketball game this season, which started one day after he buried his mother in Knollwood Memorial Park in Canton.

“Just point up at God because he always does stuff for a reason,” Woodyard says. “God never takes something away and not give you something back. So I just think about that.”

Gwendolyn Woodyard died Dec. 1, 2009, at the age of 50, after a two-year battle with ovarian cancer. Oddly, it was a two-year period filled with chemotherapy, surgeries and hospital stays that Kyle Woodyard will always cherish.

A woman who never did much caring for Kyle or his siblings had moved in with them to be cared for. By the time she quietly passed in her sleep on a Tuesday night -- while Kyle did homework in the computer room downstairs and his 21-year-old sister, Keisha, held vigil at her bedside -- they had a mother.

“If she wouldn’t have gotten the cancer, I wouldn’t have gotten to know her in the first place,” says Kyle, who’s never met his father. “Now I have memories I can look back on forever. Before this, I had no memories.”

Woodyard’s heartbreak is hardly a unique emotion on the Ypsilanti roster. The 19-year-old sister of senior Demetrius Bradford died on New Year’s Eve and senior Conner Heine has a large tattoo on his shoulder in honor of his deceased father, George Heine.

Head coach Steve Brooks freely shares his own past with his players. His mother died while she gave birth to him and he didn’t meet his father until he was a 23-year-old man.

“I tell these kids they’re not the only people that came up that way and not to use it as a crutch,” says Brooks, who estimates that four of the 50 players in his program live at home with a mother and father. “But the door is always open to talk about it. We truly are a big family.”

Woodyard was the starting point guard in Friday’s 57-50 win at Chelsea, just as he was in a season-opening win at Wyandotte Roosevelt on Dec. 8. That game was played one day after the Phoenix gathered together at Lucille’s Memorial Chapel in Ypsilanti.

“I was thinking about not playing for a second. But I just kept on living,” Woodyard says. “When I play basketball, I just cherish being out on the court. I’m not thinking about anything else besides hooping.”

It’s a welcome escape for a 17-year-old kid who says he sometimes feels like he’s gone through more tough times than most grown men.

Priscilla Woodyard, now 76, had already raised five children when she officially adopted a 3-year-old Kyle and 6-year-old Keisha after her own daughter “went down the wrong path” filled with drug abuse. An infant brother that Kyle doesn’t remember was adopted by another family.

They lived in River Rouge, visiting their mother in Detroit once or twice a year, until Kyle was stabbed in the back during an altercation after a pick-up basketball game the summer before seventh grade. After that incident, the family packed up and moved to Ypsilanti, around the corner from Priscilla’s oldest son, Gary Tyson.

Woodyard calls Tyson his role model on and off the basketball court. During a recent dinner conversation, he tells tales of Tyson running the court with George Gervin at Eastern Michigan University and starts numerous sentences with “My uncle always says … “

“I’m proud of Kyle and I push him as hard as I pushed any of my kids or my own brothers,” says Tyson, a member of the EMU athletic hall of fame.

Tyson says Woodyard has matured considerably over the past two tumultuous years. Though he’s shy and lacks confidence at times, he’s also polite, trouble-free and has above a 3.0 grade point average in school.

“I just kept on moving forward. Time’s not going to stop. Some people never move on, they just stay down. But you have to move on some time,” says Woodyard, who hopes to study accounting in college.

“I’m just trying to make the most out of every day. If something don’t go my way, it don’t really phase me that much. I just look forward to the next thing that can go my way.”

Brooks is similarly impressed with Woodyard, who was selected as the team’s lone captain. He watched with pride as Woodyard dedicated himself to cross country this fall and became an individual qualifier for the Division 2 state championships.

“He’s one of those guys, been in the program since a freshman, and has been at everything we ask him to be at and done everything we’ve asked him to do,” Brooks says. “He’s the perfect kid, really. You’d love for him to be your son.”

And Woodyard loved being somebody’s son. Even if it was for just two short years and a point to the heavens.

“I don’t have to wonder no more. Now I know who she is,” Woodyard says. “And she told me she loved me just about every day.”

Rich Rezler covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at 734-623-2553 or richrezler@annarbor.com.