Determination

     
         Taylor Statham was a regular kid in high school pursing his dreams of playing Division 1 basketball on scholarship, but one day in a game he decided to take his coach's advice and take the charge in the game rather than block the opposing player. Taylor took a knee to the groin and was taken to the hospital to get it checked out to see if he had any injuries after the fact. It turned out after the X-ray showed that he had testicular cancer!!! If he had waited a couple months the cancer would have spread throughout his whole body eventually killing him. Now Taylor had to go through the ultimate test of strength, chemotherapy. Chemotherapy will break even the strongest of people and make them want to give up the fight on cancer; however, it was his determination to get back to basketball is what got him through it. There were some days like when he lost his hair in the shower due to the chemotherapy that he would break down a feel like giving up, but he didn't and finally got cleared of cancer in April of last year. The worst part of it all was when he called a coach that he was being recruited by and the coach says, 'I heard that all of your hair fell out, and now you are not playing basketball anymore'. For a coach to say something like that to a player that has gone through two six week chemo session is very inconsiderate. 

         However, this made Taylor even more determined to get back to the game he loved. He had lost a good 25 pounds since cancer, and in his last game of his high school career he managed to score 25 points. In the end he was able to score a tryout with California Baptist University, a Division two basketball school. With his skill and hard work he was able to get a scholarship. Hopefully one day Taylor will fulfill his dream of playing pro basketball overseas, but whatever he does he will always give a hundred and ten percent.