2-Year-Old Boy Fighting Cancer Gets Emotional Lift From Oly Bears Basketball Team

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Olympia Bears BasketballBy Gail Wood

The scene, a smiling 2-year-old boy sitting by his parents during a high school basketball game, is so familiar, repeated by other families throughout a season.

Yet this moment for Peyton Sheaffer, wearing a blue Olympia Bears sweatsuit and cheering for his favorite team, is pure magic.

Magic for Peyton, for his parents and for the Olympia boys basketball team.

At this moment, Peyton is merely a little boy having fun, cheering and laughing. He’s not a little boy in a doctor’s office, with tubes in his arm, fighting for life.

Since September, Peyton has spent every Friday in Children’s Hospital in Seattle getting chemotherapy treatments. In August, Peyton was diagnosed with Rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare type of cancer. After two surgeries to remove cancerous tumors, a weekly, six-month chemo treatment began. The side effects treatment have been the loss of his hair and nausea.

Hoping to give Peyton an emotional boost, the Olympia Bears adopted Peyton as their honorary “Bear of the Year.”

“If we can make a few days brighter for him, then it’s worth it,” said Luke Salme, the Olympia basketball coach.

Peyton, with his parents by his side, has made it to a Bears’ practice and a game. He was the guest of honor at an Olympia home game early in the season against Timberline. Cheerleaders painted signs welcoming Peyton to the game. It was a Friday, the same day Peyton undergoes his chemo treatment. So, he was tired come game time.

“We’re just trying to make him feel special, which he is,” said Dom Francks, Olympia senior forward. “We just hope it means a lot to him. He’s been through a lot.”

Until early December, Peyton was pretty much quarantined to his house, unable to be around other people. Chemo lowers the body’s immune system, making Peyton susceptible to colds and the flu. If he caught a bug, he might have to spend several weeks in the hospital.

But two weeks ago, doctors gave Peyton’s parents permission to take him out in public. He’s improving. The treatments are working.

“The prognosis sounds fantastic,” Salme said. “They ran some x-rays the day after Thanksgiving to see if the treatments were working. There was no evidence of cancer anywhere.”

Salme’s interest in helping Peyton and his family is twofold. He’s a good friend of Peyton’s parents, Ben and Brandy Sheaffer. Salme and Ben were college teammates on Western Washington University’s basketball team after they were high school rivals. They were also roommates at WWU and became good friends. Salme and his wife even set up the first date with Ben and Brandy.

When Salme got a coaching job at Yelm High School, he hired Ben to be his junior varsity coach.

“There’s some definite connections there,” Salme said.

Besides the friendship, the other factor for Salme’s involvement is he’s a cancer survivor himself. When he was 10, Salme had bone cancer.

“Everyone has been effected by cancer in some way,” Salme said. “I think this is a cool experience for all the kids on the team.”

At the team’s weekend getaway at Salme’s parent’s country home early in the season, he asked his players if they’d be interested in helping the Sheaffer family and adopting Peyton as the team’s honorary Bear. They eagerly accepted.

“I talked to Ben and asked what could we do,” Salme said. “He said the coolest thing would be just to get him out of the house and be a part of something.”

All of the Olympia basketball players, from varsity to junior varsity, wear a wrist band 24/7 that says “Support Peyton.”  The bracelets are reminders to the players about a little boy who is facing a huge challenge.

“We lost our first game of the season. We were pretty down,” Francks said. “But this helps us keep everything in perspective. There are a lot more important things.”

Besides teaching his team about setting screens, shooting a basketball and playing defense, Salme hopes to teach them something about helping.

“Everyone knows about cancer,” Salme said. “And when it’s a little, innocent 2-year-old boy then it tugs at the heartstrings. The kids were excited about this being our project. We wanted to do outside ourselves this year.”

Every year, Salme has his team involved in some community project. They’ve worked at the soup kitchen and they’ve adopted families for Christmas, giving them gifts. This year they’re trying to lift the spirits of a little boy with cancer.

Initially, Salme had planned on having the team bring dinners to the Sheaffer family, or helping by donating money from a fundraiser to help cover hospital costs. But Salme decided the best way to help Peyton was to let him know that other people are pulling and praying for him. At the end of the season, Salme will give the Sheaffers the money collected from the team program sales sold before games, sending them on a little weekend getaway. The programs are free and a donation for the Sheaffer family is accepted. Peyton’s story is in the program.

Early on, Peyton’s reactions to the chemo was pretty severe, forcing him to spend a couple of days in the hospital. Now, he takes the treatment and goes home the same afternoon. Salme, along with his players, is hoping Peyton shows up to more games and practices over the Christmas break.

The team’s support of Peyton and his family helps in two ways. It helps encourages Peyton and  it helps the players.

“It’s the coolest thing for our kids to be more invested,” Salme said. “It’s good for them to do something outside of themselves.”

 

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