Good luck to this young man making the team and in life:
Despite tumor, Kyle Atkinson pursues basketball dreams
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Kyle Atkinson was preparing to jump out of an airplane at 12,000 feet when his tandem instructor asked whether he wanted to do a couple of flips while exiting the plane.
Six months earlier, Atkinson had been diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor and was now scheduled to undergo a craniotomy, a procedure in which a portion of his skull would be removed so the doctors could take out some of the tumor.
He said yes to the flips.
"There's cooler ways to die than a brain tumor," Atkinson said.
For the past year and a half, the 21-year-old has been working on getting back the life of the sharpshooting college basketball player he had been.
After finding out he had been living with a pituitary tumor on his brain that may never be gone, undergoing two brain surgeries – including one in which he suffered a stroke – being in a debilitating car accident days after the second brain surgery and undergoing radiation, he still jokes about how he should get the last brownie because he has a brain tumor.
"His impact has gone far past the 3-point shooting, far past the struggles that he's gone through," South Salem basketball coach Tyler Allen said. "He's made it very personable. He's put himself out there for people to be able to see him as an example and an encouragement."
Atkinson has always been eager to take any shot, no matter how far away he seems to be from the hoop.
Atkinson plans on walking on to the Portland State's men's basketball team this fall, not long after walking under his own power was a challenge.
He has no illusions that he's going to be an all-American at the Division I level.
"My doctors gave me the biggest-tumor-of-the-year award," he said. "That's my claim to fame right now."
As a youth, he played on a competitive basketball team loaded with future college athletes including A.J. Lapray, Maximo "Junior" Espitia, Avry Holmes, Justin Burgess, Ryan Show and Brenden Shaffer.
It was no surprise he made the varsity team at South Salem as a freshman, but it took time to make his mark as a long-range specialist.
There was the game at McKay High when he hit nine 3-pointers, and the one when he sank two free throws with 15 seconds left at Grant for a 67-66 win his senior year in the state playoffs in 2012.
"I always try to shoot like him because you know he's one of the great shooters," former South Salem teammate Collin Huun said. "He's got more range than most people I've ever seen."
Though Atkinson was a first-team all-Central Valley Conference selection after averaging 16 points, six assists and five rebounds per game as a senior, at 6-foot-2 and not particularly athletic, he was recruited only by Concordia and Chemeketa Community College.
He took the partial scholarship at Concordia but spent most weekends at his family's home in Salem with his mother, Holley Oglesby, and his twin younger brothers, Jackson and Jaren Oglesby.
Atkinson produced respectable numbers of 1.8 points and 1.0 rebounds in an average of 7.8 minutes over 24 games as a freshman, but something didn't feel right.
"Nothing really came together," he said. "I don't know if that was basketball, if that was school, if I missed my family, but nothing really came together."
It was an easy decision to transfer to Chemeketa for his sophomore season. Sure, he could still shoot, but he was sluggish and not the athlete he once was.
Mentor Sam Lapray noticed that Atkinson had put on weight while training with A.J. Lapray and Tanner Morgan in the summer before attending Chemeketa, but he assumed it had something to do with his schedule of two workouts per day along with working a full shift at the Nike Factory Store.
"Gosh, are you that out of shape?" Sam Lapray recalls thinking.
Atkinson describes his routine while attending Chemeketa as waking up to constant soreness, going to classes, napping in his car between classes, going to practice and the team meeting that followed, taking a nap on the floor of the team room and then going home to sleep.
As a sophomore at Chemeketa, though, Atkinson averaged 6.8 points and 1.1 assists in an average of 16 minutes per game.
Atkinson was seventh in the NWAACC in 3-point shooting at 43.9 percent (61-for-139) despite nearly going blind in his right eye.
"To be out there competing at a high level and playing college basketball and accomplishing what he did – one, it's pretty amazing. Two, it's scary," Chemeketa coach David Abderhalden.
There had been symptoms that something was wrong for years, but Atkinson's first conscious seizure – which he describes as having water in his nose, a nasty taste in his mouth and feeling sick to his stomach for five minutes – at Concordia was his first indication of anything serious.
They grew more frequent as he played at Chemeketa until the day he had six conscious seizures in the 2014 NWAACC Tournament.
"That's kind of when I knew something was wrong and I was like, all right, I need to go to the doctor," he said.
An MRI in April 2014 revealed he had a non-cancerous tumor the size of a softball growing on his pituitary gland.
Atkinson was forced to put his life on hold. He had to quit his job and drop all but one of his classes.
"The team of doctors at OHSU just swarmed in because they … hadn't seen a tumor this big," Holley Oglesby said.
The first course of treatment was to take the medication Cabergoline, as well as a number of other drugs.
"What they put me on they said would shrink the tumor," he said. "It didn't."
After nearly six months of medication didn't inhibit the tumor's growth, a craniotomy became necessary.
It was unclear how the surgery would affect him so he decided to try a few things for the first time.
He wanted to swim with sharks, but that proved impractical so he went skydiving on his 21st birthday, Oct. 7.
"When we were both done with it, we both looked at each other like, 'I don't need to do that again,'" Sam Lapray said. "Then we went to the casino that night because he hadn't gambled or anything. If you're in that kind of situation you're trying to fit some stuff in."
Atkinson's first surgery on Oct. 27 lasted nine hours, during which he suffered a stroke.
When he woke, he had no use of his left side, and not much use of the rest of his body.
The doctors told him that if the tumor had continued to grow the conscious seizures would have turned into seizures and eventually killed him.
Even brain surgery, though, couldn't keep Atkinson from basketball.
Using a walker, he joined the coaching staff at South Salem, even when he could only contribute by sitting on the bench and yelling.
He was at every game and practice he could get to. He often used his walker to get near a hoop, balance himself with one hand and shoot the ball with the others at practices.
"The most important piece for him is if he wanted to stay involved in basketball is to find a different outlet that could fit for that circumstance," Allen said.
Atkinson's second surgery on Jan. 21 wasn't as major. The doctors went through his nose to remove more of the tumor. The recovery wasn't supposed to be as severe, but it got worse.
Ten days later, his mother was driving him to South Salem's game at McKay when their car was rear-ended.
Atkinson was more damaged than the car. His legs were pinned against the dashboard and he couldn't feel his feet.
"The ambulance came and Kyle was like, 'I am not going back to the hospital,' " Holley Oglesby said. "He was just adamant, and they wanted to take him to a hospital and he refused and had to sign some waiver."
He refused to miss the game so a friend picked him up and drove him the rest of the way to McKay.
Atkinson woke up in crushing pain in the middle of the night and went to the emergency room, where he found out that he had three compression fractures and a bulging disc in his back.
"The guy, he's committed, and whatever he's commit to, be it his family, be it basketball, be it his sport, whatever he commits himself to, he wants to follow through with it," Allen said.
Depending on how you look at it, Portland State is a long way away or very close.
"Even though I'm walking on, I probably won't play, right?" he said. "Probably won't travel. Ultimately, what are walk-ons there for? To push the team and eventually earn a scholarship.
"Let's be realistic. I'm probably not going to earn a scholarship. But in my head I'm getting a full ride."
Atkinson's connection with Portland State is through assistant coach Mike Plank, a former Willamette athlete who coached Atkinson years ago on a youth team.
He is 12 credits short of his associate degree from Chemeketa but said he can get around the NCAA's 4-2-4 transfer rules – which require athletes who transfer from four-year schools to two-year schools to have their associate degree before transferring back to a four-year school – because he is walking on at Portland State.
In theory, the 2014-15 season would count as Atkinson's redshirt year when he enrolls at Portland State this fall.
Normally athletes have five years to complete their four years of eligibility, but he started six weeks of radiation this week as the remainder of the tumor has grown in some areas and shrunk in others and chemotherapy is a possibility.
"We might have to wait for him to enroll after the situation," Sam Lapray said. "If he needed to get more eligibility, his school could apply for him to get that year back."
Atkinson's goal of returning to college basketball is not unprecedented. Andrew Papenfus returned to play basketball in January for Santa Clara four months after having surgery to remove a brain tumor.
Whether Atkinson can play basketball at the Division I level is another question.
"There's value to be had out of that, too, even if he never steps on the floor," Abderhalden said. "There's value to be had in him saying that, 'You know what, I went through all this and I stepped up and I tried this. I have no regrets now.'
"I think that's good. The chances of him making it are pretty low, but what the hell. Why not? You weren't sure if you were ever going to be able to walk right again."
Atkinson still has a lot of work to do physically.
Those around him put his physical abilities at 50 percent compared with when he was in high school.
The steroids he is taking to combat the symptoms caused him to gain weight. Although he's down 20 pounds to 225, he wants to be at 200 before school starts in the fall.
He wears a helmet to protect the area where part of his skull was removed and he wears a brace to support his foot drop, a side effect of the stroke.
"And I'm already not that athletic to begin with," he said.
But he can still shoot.
"Even the other day I was playing with him at the Courthouse and he's still one of the best shooters at the Courthouse, even after everything he's gone through," Huun said. "I feel like he'll always be able to shoot it, no matter what."
