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GREENSBORO -- Chase Jones is raising money in exchange for shaved heads.

Jones, a Ragsdale graduate from Greensboro, is a brain cancer survivor and bullpen catcher for the North Carolina baseball team. He organized BaseBald for the Cure, a fundraiser for the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and N.C. Children's Hospital.

The shaving will commence after Sunday's home game against N.C. State, and one Tar Heels player will have his head shaved for each $100 raised.

"I've got a couple of other catchers who have some long hair that I cannot wait to get a stab at," Jones said.

Reaching the fundraising goal of $3,500 means all players heads' would be shaved, which appears likely. As of Thursday more than $3,400 had been raised.

"Some guys are asking if they can pay $100 not to get their heads shaved," Jones said. "I talked to Coach (Mike) Fox, and he approved it."

The fundraiser represents a personal mission for Jones, who wears his hair short-cropped anyway. Proceeds will fund cancer research for children.

"Taking care of children and their families with cancer is an extremely expensive and difficult experience, and all funds will be used to help them," said Dr. Stuart Gold, head of the pediatric oncology program at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Gold treated Jones when the tumor was diagnosed in 2006. Jones' cancer is gone, but he knows there's the danger that it could return.

He recently lost a friend that way to a rare form of childhood cancer, he said.

Ashton Miller was a Western Guilford graduate and a UNC student. Jones met her after his 2006 diagnosis was treated, in spring 2007. She had just found out that she had a fast-growing, highly malignant cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma.

"She was still going to classes last fall," he said, "and it was a really quick change of events."

Miller died March 28.

Her passing humbled Jones.

"Up until that point I could always look at myself and feel like, even though I had been through cancer, I had beaten that and it wasn't that great of an effect to me," he said. "I was full of pride."

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com