Family, Geneva players central figures to Nolan

Like the opening of the old Saturday afternoon television program, “ABC's Wide World of Sports,” this season contained both thrills and agony for Geneva girls basketball coach Gina Nolan.

The Vikings' seven-year head coach was diagnosed with a particularly invasive form of ductile breast cancer on June 9, 2010, which was treated with surgery as well as eight rounds of chemotherapy spread over four months.

When the school year started she was limited to teaching one class, an Advanced Placement Spanish class, and conducted basketball tryouts while finishing her treatments. Finding herself too fatigued to stay with the team after the first two games, Nolan withdrew while assistants Katie Steely and Eric Duffett and former Vikings boys coach Tim Pease conducted coaching duties. Nolan returned for a couple games, including an 82-18 wipeout of Elgin on Dec. 10 in which senior Kat Yelle scored her 1,000th point.

When second semester came she was back full time in the classroom and on the basketball court, coaching Geneva in a 54-52 loss to Bartlett on Jan. 4. Nolan's Vikings went on to win the inaugural Upstate Eight Conference River Division title plus a third straight sectional title, and ended their season with a record of 25-7.

Nolan recently had her three-month checkup, consisting of a physical and blood work, and will continue to see her oncologist every three months and her surgeon twice annually over this critical two-year period.

The update?

“No news is good news,” she said.

Nolan, a Glenbard East graduate and a walk-on softball player at Northwestern University, was a good sport to sit through two rounds of phone interviews at her Geneva home, with her beagle named Baxter, discussing her experiences good and bad.

Daily Herald: How are you feeling?

Gina Nolan: I feel good. Today's (March 1) a tough day, actually, for me because I'm exhausted with the run of the last two weeks. The last two weeks there was literally something every night — a game, scouting, an all-conference meeting.

Other than that I feel great, definitely the strongest I've been.

One of the side affects is neuropathy, it's the numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, from the last four treatments I had. My fingertips are better; my feet were worse to begin with, there weren't that many shoes that were comfortable, but they still tingle a lot.

DH: You feel upbeat?

GN: I'd like to think that even before my diagnosis I was an upbeat, positive person. The fear of it recurring will always be with me. I've talked with many other survivors that said if you don't have that fear you probably have something wrong with you...

I feel like I went from being so focused on getting through treatment then getting so focused on getting better to coach and teach full time again. Now that coaching just ended yesterday I felt like, what was I going to focus on now? But now I feel incredibly exhausted, which probably affects my state of mind right now.

DH: How did the news of your cancer affect the basketball team?

GN: It started affecting them last summer when I told them of my diagnosis. That night obviously not everyone was there, it was a summer shootout we were in, but I wanted them to hear it from me and not from anyone else. I think they were very surprised and a little scared, but they were incredibly supportive. I hope it didn't affect them too negatively.

They seemed open to having me around in whatever capacity that was. Early on, usually I had to sit in practice. I think, hopefully in a positive way, it just showed that even as terrible a disease as it is, it didn't change who I was. Even though physically it changed me, emotionally and mentally it couldn't take away my passion for working and teaching and coaching.

DH: You chose to teach one class in the first semester, during your treatments.

GN: I wanted to continue teaching and I felt good with that class, whatever I went through physically and emotionally, to be around a good, supportive group. Obviously I lost my hair while teaching them. They might never really realize how much they truly supported me going through that every day and being a teacher and not just a cancer patient.

DH: This is probably an odd subject, but pets can be perceptive about illness. Did your dog seem to know what was going on?

GN: I was in the hospital a couple days and when I came home from the hospital he actually wouldn't come around me very much. It was kind of weird. My mom (Florida resident Yvonne Campeglia) was also here with two other dogs, so I don't know if that was part of it.

But after that, when I went through chemo I think he knew that I was sick because he would tend to be near me more than he had been the previous two weeks. He would lay on the floor near me on the couch or lay on the bed near me.

He knew something was up with me because I couldn't do the things I used to — I couldn't walk him like I used to, or sometimes even, honestly, get up off the couch to let him out in the back yard. My mom had to come up and stay with me through everything, and she took care of all those things. He definitely knew that something was up, I believe.

DH: This obviously had to be a very trying season.

GN: The girls and myself — experiences on and off the court — we really had to fight through a lot of adversity and change. We really had to rely on each other to come through and have success. We'd had success before, but it really just kept building on each other. It was almost like those experiences were building blocks for what we were then able to accomplish at the end of the season.

I'm a believer that experiences, good or bad, help shape you and form your character and who you are. I think my girls this year just showed an incredible amount of character in what they were able to accomplish on the court, but then just who they were as people off the court, and just supporters of the program and of me. I think that says a lot about them...

We just really started to jell at the right time. I think we were getting stronger as a team, I was getting stronger physically, we were getting better and it all just came together at the right time to win conference. We needed to avenge an earlier loss (to St. Charles North), and we made it far in the tournament, which was really exciting, and we went probably farther than anyone thought we would go.

DH: When you returned to the team, did your outlook change?

GN: My assistant coaches used to tease me that I could never really eat before a game because I would just get a little nervous. I didn't feel as nervous before a game this year. I guess just everything I'd been through put it in perspective.

I had a lot of other things that I'd been incredibly nervous about this summer and fall, so I just felt like... it was important but it put me more at ease about how I would just be emotionally, be more in the frame of mind that I was doing everything I could to help the girls and I knew the girls were doing everything that they could out on the court. As long as we were giving our best there was nothing to be nervous about or worried about.

DH: You said that as a cancer survivor, you realize there are “no givens.”

GN: Every day that I wake I'm thankful for that day, and for the family that has supported me through this, and friends as well. I'm thankful for that and hopeful that I can make every day count, because that's the one thing a cancer diagnosis does, is make you be very aware of how life could be taken away from you.

DH: As an athlete yourself, you probably treated yourself pretty well. How have you become more aware of diet to help prevent a recurrence of cancer?

GN: I haven't become a strict vegetarian but I've stopped eating red meat and cheeses because (certain) hormones in cheeses aren't good for a cancer patient. I've tried to do a lot more of a plant-based diet. Basically, every time I sit down two-thirds of what I eat should be plant-based. I have met with a dietitian as well in my oncologist's office. I'm trying to limit sugar because the sugar-insulin balance within my body could affect cancer cells.

I guess the biggest thing, especially during basketball season, for me it was when you come home from practice at 6 o'clock exhausted from all day, it's easier to just make a frozen meal or pick up something on the way home versus cooking a good meal. I think those are some of the areas I've just really tried to change my lifestyle ... I don't drink soda anymore.

People have asked me if that's a hard decision, how hard to follow that? For me it hasn't been at all because I look at it as eat a cookie or a doughnut, or soda versus have a better chance for survival without cancer. I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat.

DH: How do you think you'll remember this season?

GN: It'll probably be in a couple different parts. There's the part where I tried to come back and I couldn't and then the part of being away. Then, obviously, the end when at least I felt a little more normal.

In general I think I'll remember the girls the most, what they'll represent to me, and I told them this in our locker room after the last game: that forever they'll be more than the team that was 25-7 and winning regional and sectional championships.

They were the team that got me through treatment and was there for me to have something to look forward to come back to — and at Christmas made me homemade ornaments for my tree. Just a lot of things that they did to encourage me and lift my spirits.