adversity athlete of the year madison egli

basketball school: NorKam (Kamloops) freshman’s future: Thompson Rivers

When Madison Egli got the news from her doctor that day back in mid-January of 2014, it’s no stretch to say that she felt the world crumbling around her.

“It felt like two plates were being stretched apart and I was falling through, like I was in an earthquake,” the senior at Kamloop’s NorKam Secondary begins. “I felt like I had collapsed. I got into the fetal position.”

X-rays to confirm a suspected rib dislocation were confirmed, an injury she assumed had come on the basketball court, where Egli had both started and starred as a 5-foot-10 post with the Saints. But what came with the diagnosis was the discovery of the root cause of her pain: A 15-cm cancerous mass in her chest.

Each year, Head of the Class runs a season-long campaign in B.C. high schools, asking readers of The Province to nominate courageous Grade 12 student-athletes for our Adversity Award. This year, in what was the largest number of overall ballots cast for our four finalists, Egli — and her incredible story of perseverance and belief — merited the greatest number of online votes.

At this time last year, she was nearing the end of her extensive chemotherapy sessions. Stretched over six months, Egli would make 12 trips to BC Children’s Hospital to receive 48 separate treatments.

Throughout it all, friends and family were her anchor, but so was basketball.

“I just never thought I was going to die,” says Egli, who last Sept. 16, with her Grade 12 year just underway, was officially declared cancerfree. “Failure was not an option, and basketball is my life.”

To that end, Egli not only attended tryouts for the Saints’ senior varsity team in the fall, just months after her final chemotherapy sessions, she made the roster and wound up as a starter on a team that came within a victory of qualifying for the B.C. Triple A championship.

Inspiration, guidance, motivation. Egli says she got it all from her coach, Lindsey Karpluk, to whom she says she trusts her life.

Throughout her ordeal, she never hid, determined at even her lowest ebb to serve as a role model for young children: one who exemplifies a fighter, and one who wasn’t afraid to make light of her situation.

“I named my tumour Angus,” she laughs. “I wanted to give it a name, make it real. I also found that humour can help. My basketball is named Otis. My car is named Henry, and my iPad is named iMadi.”

Set to begin studies at her hometown Thompson Rivers University in September, Egli isn’t going to be playing basketball at the university level. Yet she’s found a new athletic identity as a runner, having already completed a half-marathon.

“I feel like I see a light,” she says. “I have done something good with a bad stack of cards. To me, that is huge.”