For ten years, he captained an AAU basketball team that won a national championship last year.

Lately, though, the 17-year-old has hardly been able to get out of bed.

His young joints ache from several rounds of chemotherapy targeting cancer in his blood and his bone marrow.

King was diagnosed with leukemia last month, sidelining the two-sport prep star on the eve of his junior year at Middle Creek High School.

On a recent Saturday, King's #3 football jersey - flat and empty - hung from the lip of a table at Applebee's in Fuquay-Varina. The restaurant filled with his teammates, friends and coaches.

Wearing their own red and black Middle Creek jerseys, football players waited tables for dozens of patrons who had purchased breakfast tickets. They sold "Pray For Ray" bracelets and T-shirts.

They gathered in solidarity with King's fight, and to help his family with medical costs, which may include as many as three years of intensive chemotherapy, radiation therapy and spinal taps.

Signs that something might be wrong with King began to creep in last winter.

King's football and basketball practices became less of a joy for him, more of a chore. He felt weak and was easily fatigued. He got cramps, and his face swelled.

"I thought I was just under the weather," said King, who seems young for his age, with braces on his teeth and a soft voice.

"My friends thought I was just giving up. My mom thought I was just being lazy," he said.

That couldn't have been farther from the truth.

King knew something was truly wrong when he couldn't catch that perfect pass during football camp at East Carolina University in June.

"I was wide open, but I just couldn't get to the ball," he said. "Any other day, I would have scored on that one."

The next day, Ray's mother, Kathleen Merritt, took him to see a doctor in Garner to have his blood drawn.

His white blood cell count was through the roof.

Battling cancer, history

The doctor told Merritt to get him to UNC-Chapel Hill, which was better equipped to treat cancer.

"There was no time for me to process what was going on," she said. "It finally sunk in when they rushed my baby off to the ICU."

"Now, watching him struggle, it's sinking in even more," she said.

Two weeks ago, King was all but stranded upstairs in his bedroom. His knees hurt so bad he couldn't walk down the stairs.

He was groggy from a sleepless night.

"He called out to me in pain in the middle of the night," Merritt said. Doctors prescribed morphine for King to take at home. But that didn't take the edge off. Merritt finally crawled into bed with her son to comfort him, and to comfort herself.

"I've been running from cancer all my life," Merritt said.

Her mother died of breast cancer, and her brother died of pancreatic cancer.

"Ray was in the room when my brother died," Merritt said. "All he knows is that cancer kills."

But it appears King may outstep the fear and uncertainty of his disease as deftly as he did those defenders on the football field.

The odds of King surviving his illness are good.

"The chances of us curing him are far greater than not," said Stuart Gold, chief of pediatric oncology at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

King understands his disease. He knows that white blood cells fight infection and platelets help clot the blood, and that cancer cells can overrun the good cells. He learned that long ago in his honors biology class.

He's facing these facts, and the odds, straight on.

"I'm staying positive," King said. "I'm going to fight this."

For now, that fighter is cloaked in a body that's getting weaker by the day.

Perched on his bed, the slight teen hardly resembles the fierce competitor in the photo on his wall, tucked between several letters of interest from Division I college football and basketball programs.

The photo shows King running up the basketball court, screaming, his muscles flexed after a score.

'The heart of our team'

This time last year, King was leading his AAU basketball team, the Garner Road Bulldogs, to a national championship in Orlando, Fla.

Dwayne West, King's AAU coach for the past ten years, answered a call last week, passing through Jacksonville, Fla., in a van full of King's teammates.

They were on their way to defend their title at the Orlando tournament.

"He's the heart of our team," West said. "He's our leader."

The coach recalled a key moment from last year's semifinals. The Bulldogs were down by eight with 52 seconds to play. "Ray called the guys together and said, 'No matter what, we're going to win this game. Play by play.' "

And they did.

Now these teammates and coaches and family members are huddling around King once again.

Again, King finds himself down, against the odds and the clock, as determined as ever to win.