Pushing limits onthecourt
Revere’s Cheever overcomes blood clots, finishes season strong
Every athlete learns one way or another that their body has limits the mind just can’t overcome.
For Revere star athlete Erika Cheever, those limits were life threatening.
By early September, Cheever hadn’t felt right for weeks as she prepared for her senior cross country season. She couldn’t kick into that second gear, finding herself abnormally winded — and frustrated — very easily. She couldn’t even go up the 10 steps in her house without feeling fatigued.
It was a big change of pace for an athlete of her caliber — she’d received attention from Division III Salem State for her basketball acumen.
Initially, doctors thought she had developed asthma, and she tried to power through it. But meet after meet, her body just couldn’t cash the checks her hypercompetitive spirit wrote.
During her senior meet in mid-October, Cheever finally met her breaking point.
“I ran probably about less than a half a mile, I saw my mom off into the distance and I walked off to the side and just collapsed in her arms, and started crying,” she said. “I’m saying, ‘Mom, there is something wrong.’ … I just blacked out because I couldn’t steady my breath.”
Anyone who has seen how hard Cheever works can tell how affectionately she looks at sports. Basketball is her haven. Yet for someone as stubborn as she is in overcoming obstacles, the next few she faced got to her.
The senior meet left red dots on her arms, leading to suspicion of a blood disorder. After getting a D-dimer blood test, a hematologist told parents Paul and Jennifer to get Cheever to the emergency room. Doctors found she couldn’t breathe while running because of three blood clots in her lungs. She also had one in her shoulder, one on each side of her pelvis, and two in her thigh.
Normally, Cheever would aspire to be a part of the 1% of any group. But as an 18year-old girl with an eye on collegiate basketball, the 1% of people that develop blood clots from the medication she started taking was far from what she’d pictured.
“My luck,” she said. “It was crazy, my doctor actually goes around presenting my case study.”
As past athletes with blood clots have shown, it’s nearly impossible to safely play sports with them. Evident from the massive bruise Cheever got on her thigh when she bumped into a coat rack in December, you can’t play contact sports on blood thinners, either.
Revealing her plight to head basketball coach Matt Willis was emotional. Having to sit out tryouts was even harder.
“It’s hard to encourage all of the newcomer kids because I just found out the worst news,” Cheever said. “It was just, kind of, being able to work past that point.”
As a breakout star averaging 20-plus points per game her junior year, Willis said Cheever was primed for a stellar senior season, maybe could have even scored her 1,000th point. He could see how much not playing had weighed her down.
But it only lasted for a moment.
As doctors discovered how to treat her, Cheever ran with the junior varsity in practice, and did drills on the side to stay in shape. Salem State kept true to its interest in Cheever, so she committed.
Come Jan. 6, she was cleared to play against Pentucket. About a month later, Cheever dropped 30 points
— on senior night.
“I was really excited,” Cheever said. “I had my family, not just my immediate family but my extended family, come. I was really happy because I don’t get to see them too often. I have an older cousin (Josh Cheever) that used to play for Lynn Classical, and I always like to one-up him.”
“It was a nice way to see a kid who had her senior year of cross country and her senior year of basketball almost taken from her, to keep persevering and finish strong,” added Willis. “It was definitely fun to see her (score 30 points).”
Cheever still needs to check in with her medical team every two months, so she isn’t completely out of the woods medically.
But finally, she has returned to doing what she enjoys best — pushing limits against people, rather than her own body.