Sucking
down electric green Mountain Dew and enjoying every bit of a tangy buffalo
chicken sandwich, Tim Monette is way more wired than the teenager will get from
his mom’s mac and cheese that he has a true passion for.
The senior at Northville Central School stands a gentle
six feet tall, has one of the most contagious smiles a giant can have, and
loves his sports. He’s your average teenage middle-class American boy, except
for one physical trait no one can ignore. He’s bald at eighteen.
At Recovery Sports Grill in Amsterdam, Tim can
enjoy any game he wants to see. Anything from the Yankees battling the Red Sox,
to his beloved hero Blake Griffin and the Los Angeles Clippers battling for the
Western Conference title in NBA action, and he’s in front row seats to it all.
With HDTVs, sports, Mountain Dew, and delicious food, Tim is in his sanctuary,
his heaven. But, not the heaven he’s been avoiding for the past six months.
While
Griffin and the Clippers battle in the toughest conference in the NBA, Tim has been
having one hell of a battle himself.
Last
fall in the midst of his senior-year soccer season, Tim battled stomach pains.
Sharp stomach pains. As a goalkeeper, Tim had no choice but to ignore the
searing pain in his abdomen to keep his opponents from scoring.
“I
thought it was the flu,” said Shawna Monette, Tim’s mother. “During that time
of year the virus was going around.”
The
initial diagnosis by Tim’s doctors was similar. He was given pills to combat a
stomach bug. Tim continued to play.
Two
weeks later, Tim is on his back listening to the buzzing, and annoying click-clack of a CAT scan searching for
a kidney stone. However, the CAT scan had a greater find, a large mass on Tim’s
abdomen. Not something he could pass through with one trip to the bathroom. Tim
continued to play.
Tim’s
scan was sent to Albany Medical Center to be examined and answer the daunting
question of whether or not the CAT scan found a cancerous tumor in his abdomen.
One biopsy later, and Tim’s family is in a hospital waiting for the news.
It’s
cancer. Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare, highly aggressive cancer.
“I
was scared,” said Tim.
Shawna
said, “My whole world just ended.” Her seventeen year old boy may never graduate,
never get married, and just suffered one of the biggest losses of his athletic
career.
Just two weeks earlier, Tim had eighty minutes for the
rest of his life. The top goal for his senior soccer season was to come back
home to Northville with a Sectional title. Eighty minutes for glory.
“Fort Ann is a tough team,” Tim said. “It was one of the
biggest games I’ve ever played in, and afterwards I was really upset. I was
disappointed that I didn’t play better.”
Tim’s world ended.
Being a runner-up in Sectional finals for the second year
in a row was the worst part of Monette’s high school career. Now comes cancer.
The scoreboard clock on Tim Monette’s life is ticking.
Doctors told Tim that because the cancer is aggressive,
the cancer itself would respond quickly to chemotherapy treatments. Treatments consisted
of Tim being hooked up to machines while a bag dripped fluid from a bag through
a port, and to his abdomen.
Tim did a little research on the cancer he was diagnosed
with, and one thing stood out, the survival rate. “I saw there was over a
ninety percent survival rate for patients with my cancer,” said Tim. It was
just one stat, but more encouragement for the battle.
Treatments and hospital visits weren’t easy for Tim or
his family though.
“I got miserable of being in the hospital, sometimes for
a week at a time,” said Tim. “I hated not being able to hang around with my
friends.”
Tim’s best friend, Kalob Russell, shares Tim’s passion
for sports. While Tim held down the fort all season in the goal, Kalob was the
ball handler, a midfielder.
“When I discovered he was diagnosed I was in school, and
it was a text from Tim,” said Russell. Tim’s diagnosis meant that Kalob, the
basketball team’s point guard, could be without his most reliable big man for
his last season of varsity basketball. “He’s a phenomenal player at both ends
of the floor,” said Kalob.
Back in the hospital, Tim continued to battle with his
mom by his side the entire time.
“I just wanted to be there for him, it was a rough time,
and he had to spend his eighteenth birthday in the hospital,” said Shawna. “As
a mom, I just wanted to be there for him, his father and grandmother both
offered to stay, but I just wanted to be there.”
In fact, Shawna spent so much time in the hospital with
Tim that she used all of her days off from her work for the Fulton County
Lexington chapter helping children and adult with disabilities.
“She stayed with me every night,” said Tim. “If I didn’t
like the hospital food, she’d go get me Subway or something better.” Shawna
recalls there was a lot of pizza during those hospital visits.
**
Prior to basketball season, Tim was awarded the Western
Athletic Conference MVP for the North division. Along with Northville, the
North included rivals Mayfield and Galway, arguably the fiercest three-way
rivalry in Section II.
“Leaving the field with a victory over Northville or
Mayfield always put a smile on my face. And to be honest, the smile does get
bigger the more the fans get into the game,” said Galway coach Rob Martin.
“Those are the biggest games of the year, no doubt,” said
Mayfield coach Jon Caraco. “When the schedule comes out, they are the ones that
all the players and coaches circle. A result against Galway and Northville is a
reflection of the kids working hard and coming together.”
Even with the stomach pains, he didn’t even know were
cancer, the MVP award proved Tim worked the hardest.
“I couldn’t have been more proud in that moment,” said
Shawna Monette.
Jon Caraco and Rob Martin each had a part in the voting
for MVP.
“To be named WAC MVP is a testament to hard work,
dedication, and sportsmanship,” said Caraco.
Martin agreed, “I think it’s a great testament to his
playing ability and respect garnered by other coaches.”
The recognition as WAC MVP for soccer was one of the
biggest ups for Tim on the field. Basketball season was going to give Tim a lot
of the downs.
The doctors told Tim that he would lose his hair. Three
months after treatments had started Tim still had his nicely cropped, Blake
Griffin-like brown hair to adorn the top of his head. Maybe he’d be a lucky one
who wouldn’t lose his hair. He thought it’d happen sooner.
Walking around Price Chopper with his family, Tim noticed
a substantial amount of hair had fallen onto the groceries that were in the
family’s shopping cart. Tim wondered, “Where did all this dog hair come from?”
With one run of his fingers through his hair, a wad of hair between his fingers
was all the evidence that Tim needed to see. The moment he would hate most
about cancer had now surfaced.
“It was one of the tougher moments for me,” said Shawna.
“There’s nothing I could say or do to fix it.”
She couldn’t fix it, but Tim did. He went home and shaved
all his hair. If it was going to happen, Tim made it happen faster. He had been
so insecure about losing his hair, and now it was gone. The insecurity had
reached its height. Until every varsity soccer and basketball player shaved
their heads in unison with Tim. Afraid to be unlike everyone else with hair,
suddenly everyone wanted to join the kid without hair.
The entire team had come together in looking like high
school Jason Kidds, but soon Tim would be taken away from basketball.
Before one of the team’s home basketball games, Tim was
pulled into Coach John Karbowski’s office and was told that because he hasn’t
been attending school, he couldn’t play. Tim had been using a tutor to continue
the work and studies of his senior year, but even that wasn’t acceptable for
the school. He would go into the school and grab his homework and complete it
at home. For gym class he would finish packets in order to get credit for the
class.
“Tim is one of the hardest working athletes I have ever
had the opportunity to coach,” said Karbowski, who is also the school’s
athletic director. “He does a lot of things that often go unnoticed to the
normal fan, but as a coach, that I’d like to see all my players do every time
they take the court.”
Tim admits that soccer is his sport. In basketball, he’s
a rebounder, not a scorer. He compares himself to Blake Griffin, his Twitter
handle is even @NextBGriffin_23, and loves doing the dirty work.
He was even named to the all-tournament team
during a Christmas tournament at Northville which he believes was because of
his battle with cancer, and not supported by the stats he posted.
“He plays so hard,” said Karbowski. “He would dive on the
floor for every loose ball even if he was initially nowhere near the ball when
it hit the floor.”
Call
it a highlight of the situation, but Tim played that night. He wouldn’t after.
“I wasn’t able to participate in practice or in games
because of the school,” said Tim.
While Tim sat on the sidelines, the nation joined him and
his teammates. The hashtag, #LetTimPlay started trending on Twitter. Hundreds
of people across the nation heard about Tim’s story and join the fight in
getting him back onto the court again.
“It
was cool to see people as far away as California, and all over the nation
tweeting it,” said Tim.
Through
the thousands of tweets and critical response from the media and the community,
Tim was reinstated to play for the basketball team. However, Tim believes it
was more of a cover up job.
“They
made it seem like that wasn’t what they said,” said Tim. “Made it look like
they weren’t so bad.”
The
support would soon become immense for Tim.
In
Fort Ann, Chris Jackson worked to manufacture drink koozies with the phrase
“Fort Ann/Northville United” . All the profits from the koozies were given to
the Monette family. “I was grateful that someone went out of their way to help
me and my family,” said Tim. “Someone I didn’t even know personally.”
Back
home, Mckayla Fancher began to design t-shirts in support of Tim’s fight.
Starting with the color representing Tim’s cancer, wouldn’t you know it,
electric green. The shirts along with electric green Livestrong wristbands had
the hashtags #WontBeBeat and #TeamMonette. Much like Jackson’s efforts, all the
money went towards Tim’s bills and travel expenses.
“Donations
have covered at least fifty percent of the cost of gas and other things not
including medical bills,” said Tim.
Even
opposing schools used different tactics to support Tim. Galway wore the
electric green shirts during warm-ups, and wore green socks, in stark contrast
to their royal blue and gold school colors. Canajoharie wore blue tape on their
black jerseys, and a lot of people at the Mayfield game shook his hand.
“The
support is very overwhelming, and I can’t thank the people enough”, said
Shawna.
Tim
is just as thankful. “It feels really good that the rivals and athletes you
want to beat were giving donations and putting this stuff together just to help
my family and I out.”
The
true highlight of his basketball season was receiving the New York State 2014
Spirit of Sport Award from the New York Public High School Athletic Association
for battling cancer and still competing at a high level on the field. Given a
choice between the Spirit of Sport and the MVP award, Tim goes with the MVP.
“With
the MVP award I proved myself,” he said. “It’s supported by my stats. The other
awards aren’t really decided by my play or what I do.”
The
media attention is a different story for Tim Monette. “I don’t like it. I don’t
like talking on camera or in front of people,” said the camera-shy Tim. His
shyness was put on display during an interview after a win in soccer over St.
Johnsville when a reporter asked him what the defense had done to help win the
game. Tim’s intriguing response? “Kicked the ball really far away from the
goal,” he said laughing at himself. Something Tim isn’t shy to do. He keeps a
picture on his phone of Galway’s Josh Bailey “nutmegging” him from thirty yards
out with four minutes left to tie the game at one. A game, Galway would win in
OT, 2-1. He still laughs about it.
“He’s
optimistic,” said Kalob Russell. “That’s just the type of kid he is, always
trying to be in a positive mood and brighten the mood of others around him.”
Throughout
all the treatments, Shawna and Tim have said that the side effects haven’t been
as bad as they thought.
Shawna
said, “Treatments were hard, not as much as anticipated, but still hard to see
him go through it. Thank God he didn’t have bad side effects, mostly the
vomiting.”
Tim
was more worried about the mouth sores that are common with Burkitt’s lymphoma.
“I only got one, and it wasn’t that bad,” he said. Nausea only got to Tim once
as well.
Tim’s
biggest fear is still death. At eighteen, it’s hard to ignore the reality that
Tim has been living with a disease that could kill him, and not allow him to
see tomorrow. Every milestone a person can go through, Tim may never get the
chance to enjoy.
“If
I passed away, I’d want everyone to remember how hard I worked for everything,”
said Tim. “I always gave one-hundred and ten percent. I’d want them to remember
what I did.”
As
Tim’s best friend, Kalob tried not to focus on it. “I always tried not to think
like that. Although I always had the thought of, “My best friend has cancer,
there’s a possibility something can happen to him.” It’s scary, but if he
senses my fear, I wouldn’t want it to scare him.”
Tim’s
last treatment isn’t until July, but Tim is convinced he’ll be a survivor. His
last scan showed a mass, but the doctors couldn’t confirm if it was a cancerous
mass, dead or scar tissue, or just his intestine.
On
April 15th, Shawna Monette posted via Facebook that Tim’s doctor
said his cancer was in remission. A six-month battle that had costed Tim time
on the basketball court, time away from friends, and too much time in the
hospital seemed to begin to come to end with Tim the victor.
“It’s
amazing knowing it’s all gone, and I’m basically on a cruise control, and
really don’t have to worry,” said Tim.
“It
was so relieving to hear,” said Shawna. “It was one of the happiest days of my
life besides him being born.”
Kalob
was on vacation in Baltimore when he received the text from Tim. “Man was I
excited! I actually started to cry happy tears,” said Kalob. “I knew he could
do it. I told him from day one he was going to beat cancer.”
In
June, Tim will be graduating alongside Kalob from Northville Central School.
After that, Tim plans to attend Fulton Montgomery Community College and study
criminal justice in the hopes of one day becoming a New York State Trooper.
Shawna
is excited for Tim’s future, “He’ll be fulfilling at whatever he sets his mind
to. He’s a strong, young man.”
Tim
Monette’s entering another quarter of his life. The scoreboard clock has reset,
and there’s no doubt the scoreboard says he’s in the lead. But, even Tim will
be the first to admit it’s the hardest points he’s ever scored.
“I
just want them to remember what I did.”
