SYDNEY, N.S. -- Debbie Ruiz was a skilled point guard at Cape Breton University whose large presences on the court more than made up for her small size.

Ruiz was just 36 years old when she lost a battle with cancer in the summer of 2016 in her hometown of Montreal, but her former team won’t soon forget her.  

CBU women’s basketball coach Fabian MacKenzie made that promise as a final favor to his star player, and now her games have become compulsory viewing for new team members.

“Every player of mine has to know who she is. We have a video of her, a highlight video, basically to know how good she was. How amazing she was on the floor, but the stories that are told about her and the stuff we pass down about how she led and how she did things. That’s the kind of legacy she leaves behind,” MacKenzie said.

Even when Ruiz was sick, she still made sure to keep tabs on her former team, and a tournament will now be held annually in her honour.

“When she was in her final days, she just said to me ‘don’t let me be forgotten,’ so I said, ‘we’re never going to let that happen here,’ and that’s why we have the tournament here and that’s why we talk so much about her,” said MacKenzie.

The four-team tournament will take place this weekend at CBU’s Sullivan Field House, where Ruiz was a two-time Atlantic university sport all-star, and where she led the Capers to a national silver medal in 2006.

But off the court, MacKenzie says Ruiz was so much more.

“She loved trying to help kids, she had come from a background where she had a lot of help growing up,” he said, “People really inspired her to play basketball, and she just gave that back so much.”

In addition to the tournament, this will be the first year for a memorial scholarship in Debbie Ruiz’s name and it will be given out this weekend to a deserving player on the woman’s basketball team.

“She had probably the longest arms in the entire world, and what I mean about that is – she touched everybody,” MacKenzie said.

More than 20 former Capers are expected to attend this weekend’s event, some travelling from as far away as the United States.

“Some of them never played with her, but knew who she was, and knew her legendary status with us and what she did, and they want to be there to honour her,” he said.

A leader on and off the court, remembered for how much she packed into the years she lived.

“She got every inch or everything out of her body in life and gave so much to everybody,” he said, keeping his promise that she will not be forgotten.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Ryan MacDonald