Incurable disease no match for Tybur
Junior fights way into nationals in breaststroke
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M junior Jonathan Tybur will compete in the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship starting Friday in Indianapolis, and he’s entering his two breaststroke competitions with goggled eyes opened wide.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Tybur said. “But I know it’s going to be amazing.”
It already is. A little more than five years ago, Tybur was turning heads in pools around The Woodlands as a sophomore at College Park High.
“I was training to make the United States Olympic
Trials,” Tybur said.
That’s when Tybur’s biggest trial began, one that’s ongoing against an incurable disease.
“I started noticing blood in my stool,” he said of when he was 15 and in the middle of his sophomore year. “I was starting to feel weaker overall, and I started using the bathroom more frequently. Ten times a day — sometimes more. I was starting to deteriorate inside. I just kept thinking, ‘I’m putting too much stress on myself.’ ”
He wasn’t, but he also kept the oc- currences to himself as long as possible.
“I didn’t tell my parents at first,” he said. “Blood in your stool is not something you’re super comfortable talking about.”
Tybur finally had no choice, as his shoulders and joints began hurting so badly he agreed to a hospital visit after revealing the symptoms to his parents, Charles and Marcy Tybur.
“It was getting worse, I was losing weight, I couldn’t finish practices, I was in a lot of pain,” Tybur said. “I told my mom, ‘I can’t keep living like this, this is bad.’ ”
An 11-day stay at Texas Children’s Hospital in the winter of 2011 revealed he suffered from ulcerative colitis.
“Your immune system attacks the inside of your large intestine,” Tybur said. “It was causing me bleeding, swelling and extreme pain.
“Until then, I hadn’t had any major health issues. Doctors said it was one of the worst cases they had seen in years.”
This is the part where some might bow out of sports competition. This is the part where Tybur pressed on.
“I was 6-1 and 180 pounds before this happened,” Tybur said. “Suddenly I was at 147 pounds. I had gone from 8,000-yard practices daily, to a struggle to get to the other side of the pool.”
He was no longer among the top swimmers, even in district competition, and this is the part where a seeming curse became at least a bit of a blessing.
“I was really skinny and didn’t have any endurance left,” he said. “So I had to change my strokes — I had to become really efficient in how I swam, with really good technique and form. That ended up paying off in the long run.”
Perfecting technique
About that same time, Tybur began taking immune suppressant drugs through Texas Children’s. He also participated in a study through the hospital dealing with a “microbiome transplant” — essentially receiving bacteria injections from healthy donors into his colon, and he said that helped at the time.
“The disease is incurable, they can only put you in remission,” Tybur said. “It wasn’t like the disease just went away. The immune-suppressant drugs, too, can have pretty bad side effects.”
A&M swim coach Jay Holmes marvels at the young man on whom he took a chance, at the urging of Tybur’s club and high school coaches in The Woodlands.
“Jonathan works on all of the details while at the same time pushing himself,” Holmes said. “He ‘out-techniques’ all of my guys.”
Holmes was skeptical of bringing onboard a swimmer who might need unexpected stays at the hospital. But Tim Bauer, then of The Woodlands Swim Team, wouldn’t quit raving about the young man who had battled back from disease to manage a couple of top-three finishes in state competition in the breaststroke.
Along the way in high school, Tybur overcame mononucleosis, damaged tendons in his feet from swimming, a broken hand from playing volleyball, and smashing his face and cracking his teeth in the pool on a diving well.
“Tim told me, ‘The kid just kept showing up to the pool every day, even after he’d been in the hospital. You have to take this kid, he’s worked so hard and overcome so much. A&M will be a great place for him,’ ” Holmes said.
Tybur earned a scholarship following his freshman season after walkingon.
Credit to A&M
“Jay went out on a limb to recruit me, A&M really didn’t know what it was going to get,” Tybur said. “I’ve been really fortunate these past couple of years to be healthy. For them to give me a shot to swim in college, it means everything to be able to pay them back, and go to the NCAAs.”
Following a strong junior season and improvement as a collegian, including an eighth-place finish in the 200-meter breaststroke at the SEC meet, Tybur was invited to compete in the 100 and 200 breaststrokes at college’s top level.
“Seeing him compete in the NCAAs is going to be pretty cool,” Holmes said. “He’s fought his way there. Who knows why he’s had this fire — most people would have moved on. There are easier ways to spend your life.”
Tybur said his goal has been to show that anyone can press on with his or her dreams despite a diagnosis of an incurable disease.
“I want to look back and say this disease hasn’t defined me,” Tybur said. “That persevering is what defined me.
“That way I can tell my kids someday that I went through this, and you can still achieve what you want to achieve, despite how bad a medical report is or what people are saying on the sidelines.
“I want to share my story. And, ultimately, I don’t want anyone else to have to go through this again.”