One night last November, players on the University of Portland men's and women's basketball teams joined forces to compete in one of the toughest games of their lives.

What the students lost by in points that night, they gained in perspective: They got to see a glimmer of what life is like each day for their classmate and friend Sam Bridgman.

Bridgman, a junior finance major, has a condition called Friedreich's ataxia, a rare, degenerative neuro-muscular disorder that causes progressive loss of coordination and muscle strength.

About 550 people attended the event, which raised more than $7,000 toward research for Friedreich's ataxia and offered Bridgman the opportunity to educate his classmates about his condition.

It also gave Bridgman's classmates on the campus of about 3,810 students the chance to show him what he means to them.

"Although SamJam is a more formal event, it just shows what goes on every day with him -- how we all feel about him and that we just want to help him out," says Sam Westendorf, a member of the school's Student Athlete Advisory Committee who helped organize the event.

Bridgman, a Seattle native, grew up a happy, outgoing kid who loved people and baseball -- and pretty much every other sport. His mother, Amy Koepnick, recalls how her son could make 3-pointers from the age of 7.

But his body first began behaving strangely when Bridgman was playing basketball in middle school.

"When I would rebound the ball I would box out, see the ball come off the rim, and I would tell my body to go get it, but it wouldn't move," he recalls while eating lunch on campus in the company of two close baseball buddies and his girlfriend, Molly Billingham.

Bridgman's symptoms were gradual and easy to dismiss as growing pains. It took years for a diagnosis because the condition is so rare. It wasn't until he was 15 that a pediatric neurologist in Seattle finally put a name to his body's inexplicable rebellion.

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Sam Bridgman: The University of Portland comes together to help support one of its own