Perseverance

A week before Halloween, Jennifer Speer went for what she thought would be a routine checkup. It became the most frightening experience of her life.

She was given an ultrasound. She asked the technician, “Is everything OK?”

“You need to go see your doctor right away,” the technician advised.

Speer knew something was wrong. Then came the bad news. Her doctor discovered an abdominal mass. She had ovarian cancer, the most-lethal female malignancy.

Speer’s focus had been trying to make Chaminade High’s girls’ soccer team as a goalie.

“I broke fingers, I tore my hamstring,” she said. “I was doing everything to work my hardest to start on varsity.”

Soccer was put on hold. At age 16, her life was at stake.

On Nov. 4, the doctor cut through her abdominal wall and removed an ovary containing a three-pound tumor. The operation lasted five hours. Blood and tissue samples were taken to determine if the cancer had spread. Often, the disease spreads before it is even diagnosed.

Speer spent five days in the hospital. A week after the surgery, she received good news. Tests showed the cancer had not spread. There would be no chemotherapy, but she was in pain and her energy had been sapped.

“They told me it was going to be a long, painful recovery and they were right,” she said.

Speer stayed home from school for two months trying to regain her strength. She wasn’t alone. Family and friends provided constant emotional support.

On Jan. 4, she returned to class at Chaminade. The welcome was overwhelming.

“I got hugs and kisses,” she said. “People came up to me crying. It touched me so much. I had no idea so many people cared. They prayed for me. I’m still in shock. I don’t know if I’ll be able to tell everyone how much it meant to me.”

She returned to soccer practice, too.

“I don’t know if I was ever so happy to go to soccer practice in my life,” she said. “To jog on the field was amazing. Part of me couldn’t believe I was back.”

Speer, a junior, played in her first game for Chaminade’s junior varsity team on Jan. 13.

She’s not at full strength. But her courage and determination can be seen and felt by everybody.

“She’s the most positive, upbeat kid you could know,” Coach Mike Evans said.

Speer will have to undergo regular checkups for three years, but her prognosis is good.

“I have my fear every day it’s going to come back,” she said. “I tell myself, ‘I beat it once and I’m going to do it again.’ I was kind of the person who gives up on things when it got tough. Now I know I can handle anything.”

*

John Elway and Jamal Anderson graduated from Valley high schools 11 years apart. They’ll be on opposing sides in the Super Bowl today.

Elway, a 1979 Granada Hills High graduate, could be playing in his final game for the Denver Broncos. Anderson, a 1990 El Camino Real graduate, is a rising star for the Atlanta Falcons.

“He was such an influence on kids,” former Coach Mike Maio of El Camino Real said of Anderson. “He brought everybody’s hustle and effort up to his ability.”

Darryl Stroh coached Elway in baseball and football at Granada Hills and has followed him since. He suspects today’s game will be Elway’s last.

“I’m going to be bummed,” Stroh said. “I’m really, really going to miss it.”

As for Anderson’s dancing ability and introduction to the Dirty Bird, Maio will take no credit.

“He learned that all by himself,” Maio said. . . .

Those who don’t believe wooden bats are going to bring down scores in college baseball should know UCLA was shut out in consecutive games in Hawaii last week when the Bruins were forbidden to use aluminum ones.

One of the bright spots for the Bruins was the debut of freshman pitcher Kurt Birkins from El Camino Real. He pitched four shutout innings in relief. “He’s going to be a good one,” Coach Gary Adams of UCLA said. . . .

Alemany seems almost certain to play Division I football next fall whether its parents like or not.

And Alemany can only blame itself.

Crespi, Notre Dame, Chaminade, St. Francis and Harvard-Westlake all wanted to form a new Valley league for football, but Alemany officials fought it from the beginning. Therefore, when the Catholic Athletic Assn. put together new leagues for 1999, Alemany was left on its own.

Just like Crespi, Notre Dame or any other Valley school, the Indians don’t belong in Division I.

Only one Valley team has won a Division I football title and that was Crespi in 1986. But if Alemany is to get out of Division I, its administration must make peace with the other local private schools and lobby to be part of a Valley league.

The argument made by Alemany parents claiming safety as the major issue in rejecting Division I is laughable. This is about winning and losing. . . .

When a local principal heard Alemany parents had hired an attorney, he was unimpressed. “You have your attorney from Encino, we have ours from the Westside,” he reportedly said. . . .

Junior quarterback Zac Wasserman of Westlake is already being promoted as a top college prospect for next season. PrepAmerica, a national recruiting service, has him listed as the seventh-best prospect in the nation. . . .

Cal State Northridge is in the running to sign receiver Travis Campbell of Westlake, who would be a tremendous addition to the Matadors. Campbell visited Weber State on Friday. . . .

*

Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422.