Rasnick Puts Faith Above Fear

[tbgfan 856]

Great article in today's BHC on a wonderful young man!!!

 

http://www.tricities.com/tri/sports/high...positive/10220/

[Lance 228]

article for archival purposes:

 

By Bucky Dent

Sports Writer / Bristol Herald Courier

Published: May 31, 2008

 

TAZEWELL, Va. – Few athletes in Southwest Virginia have the resume of Tazewell’s T.J. Rasnick.

 

As a soccer player, Rasnick scored 37 goals as a freshman, then 43 as a sophomore. As a football player, he’s a three-year starter who has rushed for more than 2,000 career yards and just might be the best kicker in the area.

 

Simply put, there are few opponents who have been Rasnick’s match.

 

Even the biggest one of his career.

 

The one who doesn’t fight fair, doesn’t care who it invades, and leaves even the fittest of people weak for long stretches. And that’s if it doesn’t kill them.

 

T.J. Rasnick came down with cancer less than three months ago. He might be weeks away from beating it.

 

“You treat it just like any other game or opponent,” he said. “You’ve got to know that you’re going to beat it and that if you keep your faith, you will.”

 

‘Pretty Much a Nightmare’

Rasnick and his family went to an Abingdon clinic in February, just weeks before soccer practice was to begin. He had noticed a knot near his right hamstring.

 

What he assumed would be a routine checkup turned into a coast-to-coast road trip away from routine.

 

“They told me that I needed to get an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] test,” Rasnick said one day last month. “So we went and did that and then they said I needed to go to Wake Forest and get it checked out.”

 

This was not good news. This wasn’t a tale of a simple MRI any more.

 

Rasnick knew something had to be wrong or they wouldn’t have asked him to go to Wake Forest. His father, Tim, who’s also the Tazewell soccer coach and once guided the boys basketball team to the Southwest District tournament title, feared for his son.

 

“It scares you to death,” Tim Rasnick said. “It’s pretty much a nightmare.”

 

The nightmare came true March 11.

 

T.J. Rasnick was diagnosed with a synovial sarcoma, a rare cancer which attacks only 5 to 10 percent of approximately 10,000 new soft tissue sarcoma cases every year. About half of all synovial sarcomas occur in the legs and 30 percent of them hit patients younger than 20 years old.

 

Rasnick wasn’t concerned with percentages or facts when he got the news.

 

“The first thought that I had was I wasn’t going to be able to play sports,” he said. “Then you get past that to ‘It’s a life-threatening thing,’ so there are more things to worry about than just playing ball any more.

 

“So you’re scared about everything.”

 

Plenty of others were scared with him, including Tazewell football coach Bobby Wyatt.

 

“As a parent and a coach, you’re thinking, ‘Gosh, not T.J.’ It was very difficult at that time to swallow it,” Wyatt said of the diagnosis.

 

‘Sit Around and Wait’

Perhaps the worst part about this ordeal for Rasnick, his family and his friends was that they had to wait to begin the fight against an unfair foe.

 

Rasnick’s first treatment was March 24, when he reported to Wake Forest’s Bowman Gray Medical Center. He took his treatment in three-day stints, going eight hours a day as drugs were pumped into him.

 

“It makes you feel bad and run-down,” he said.

 

As bad as Rasnick felt at times, his dad felt worse.

 

There was nothing he could do for his son, no way he could yell for him to avoid the tackler from the blind side, no play he could draw for him to get a crossing pass in the 18-yard box.

 

“You just have to sit there and pray,” Tim Rasnick said. “It doesn’t matter what you say or do … it has to be done.”

 

Two weeks went by and the doctors didn’t say anything, except that only T.J. himself would know if and when the drugs were working.

 

This was by design. The doctors didn’t want to make promises, they only wanted to let the family know about every option – including the one nobody wanted to consider.

 

Then things began to turn.

 

“All of us were sitting there, afraid to ask, and he’s the one who knew it was working,” Tim Rasnick said.

 

The synovial sarcoma was shrinking. Rasnick could sit on his right side, perhaps not for long stretches, but he could sit where, previously, it was too painful to try.

 

Last month, when talking about his ordeal, Rasnick not only sat on his right side, but occasionally had the leg propped up on his left thigh.

 

“He couldn’t have done that earlier,” Wyatt said. “He would have been leaning [to his left].”

 

A Sense of Perspective

Fighting a disease is all about little victories. Rasnick was well-equipped to take this on because of his athletic background.

 

Winning in sports is the result of doing many little things right. According to Rasnick, defeating cancer is the net sum of faith plus mental toughness plus strategizing. In short, it’s about having a game plan.

 

“You don’t ever think for one second you’re not going to get past this,” he said.

 

No bucket lists yet for this young man. Yet those closest to him say Rasnick’s fight with cancer has given him a new thought process on life.

 

“His life, up to this point, had revolved around a practice, weightlifting, a tournament, this, that … now there are other things creeping in that are more important,” Tim Rasnick said.

 

“Like a breakfast with your family on Thursday morning instead of running by the weight room for a few minutes. Or coming home for a cookout on a Saturday afternoon. He sees things for what they are now.”

 

T.J. Rasnick puts it another way, using Tazewell’s 1-9 2007 football season as an example.

 

“You value your whole life a lot more than a football game,” he said. “I would take a 1-9 season every day over this.”

 

The Future

Rasnick is penciled in for surgery June 16. What happens after that is uncertain. He could officially beat cancer or need a second surgery.

 

Even if he beats it, synovial sarcoma could return. Studies show that if it does, it normally happens within the first two years after treatment.

 

Regardless, Wyatt has noticed a change in Rasnick. The boy is becoming a man, even under adverse circumstances.

 

“He’s had his chin up the whole time; seldom have you seen him pouting about it,” Wyatt said. “All my years of coaching, I’ve always talked about young boys growing up to be men. He’s had to do it a little sooner than the others.”

 

Rasnick has done it with plenty of help. Cards and supportive e-mails have piled up, coming locally and nationally. Fund-raisers have been held to help defray medical expenses.

 

And support has come from the places where the Bulldogs’ green and white isn’t worn without some ribbing or even the occasional recrimination.

 

Take, for instance, their Southwest District neighbor about 20 miles to the south.

 

“Some guys from Richlands and I went out and ate dinner,” Rasnick said. “You’d never do that otherwise. You really wouldn’t.”

 

Wyatt didn’t know about it until Rasnick told the story to a reporter.

 

“I think it’s great,” Wyatt said. “It’s one of the aspects where we can come together for one purpose.”

 

Rasnick would love to play again, although if he can’t, Wyatt said there will be a place for him in the 2008 Tazewell football program.

 

No matter what happens, Rasnick has learned a lesson no textbook or playbook can teach.

 

“Life is the most important thing,” he said.

 

bdent@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2543