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Dyllan Nichols wouldn’t let cancer get in the way of football
MCLOUD — At his lowest moments, the thought would hit him. I have cancer, leave me alone! The words rattled in Dyllan Nichols’ head, yet they never reached his tongue.
Chemotherapy treatments one week, offseason football workouts the next.
The cycle just kept going, and Nichols, a senior offensive lineman for McLoud, could’ve stopped showing up to run with his teammates.
No one would’ve blamed the kid with cancer for skipping a workout.
“He was showing up more than a lot of healthy kids were,” said senior linebacker Austin Miller, one of Nichols’ closest friends since second grade. “It’s always been one of the biggest places in his heart to be there and participate with his teammates.
“There were days when he was slow getting around, but at least he was there, showing effort.”
Nichols was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in February, and began chemotherapy every other week in March.
On Friday night, when McLoud opens its regular season on its home field against rival Harrah, Nichols will be out there with his teammates.
Not just symbolically. He’s a starting offensive lineman, and he’s going to play.
His last chemotherapy treatment was less than two weeks ago, and he knows he’s not in game shape yet. But he’s going to be on that field.
“Every time I think about it, I get butterflies,” Nichols said. “I just love this sport. After high school, nothing’s ever going to be able to replace that feeling that the Friday night lights give you. This is what I was made to play.”
WHAT ABOUT FOOTBALL?
It was an evening in early February when Nichols found out he had cancer. His mother gave him the news.
“The first thing I asked was if I was gonna be able to play football,” Nichols said.
With the type of cancer he had, and the condition he was in, Nichols had about a 90 percent chance of surviving, and equally good odds that the cancer won’t return.
With that, Nichols was able to accept his situation.
“I was scared,” he said. “But I was never afraid that I was about to die.”
So it became a matter of figuring out how much football he could handle.
The same day McLoud coach Rusty Hall found out about Nichols, he had seen a news story on a player at the University of Pittsburgh who had been through the same battle.
“I got a hold of the head athletic trainer at Pittsburgh, and he told me about all the workouts their players had been able to do, how much running he could do and things like that,” Hall said. “We started talking to the doctors, and he said Dyllan could basically do as much as he felt like doing. And he did.
“Everything that we’ve had going on, he’s made it a point to be there.”
Nichols went to a powerlifting meet in March. He stepped under the squat bar with just 135 pounds on it. In a typical situation, he could’ve easily lifted more than twice that much weight.
When he finished, a coach from another school — unaware of his condition — ribbed him for not trying to do more.
“I’m just here to support my team,” Nichols said.
Cancer never became an excuse. The chemotherapy and vomiting and weakness was all just stuff that got in the way of what he really wanted to be doing.
He wanted to be with his teammates. So he showed up, and it helped. Chemotherapy often results in significant weight loss, but Nichols came out weighing 245 pounds — about five pounds down from his weight at the end of his junior season.
Of course, there were some summer days when simply showing up was all he could manage.
“One day, I slept in a chair in the weight room the whole workout,” he said. “I’d wake up to people yelling while they were lifting, and I’d go right back to sleep.
“I hated to see all my teammates working so hard to better themselves and I’m sitting over there not doing anything. That was rough.” But he was there. “At first, one doctor told me I wouldn’t be able to do any football stuff while I was doing chemotherapy,” Nichols said. “So I set out to prove him wrong. That’s what started it all for me.”
TESTED AND PROVEN
After each game, Hall gives a T-shirt to the player selected by the coaches to have been the team’s Most Valuable Player that week.
The purple T-shirt has large gold letters on the front, “Tested and Proven.”
This week, Hall decided he needed to break tradition. To recognize what Nichols had done, he wanted to give him the shirt at Thursday’s team dinner.
“This time, it’s about more than a game,” Hall said. “This is his life.”
A CT scan earlier this month showed that the chemotherapy had been successful. Nichols has a PET scan in a few days to see make sure he’s completely free of cancer.
While the cancer appears to be gone, the side effects from his battle will remain with him for years.
“It showed me how strong I was, mentally and physically,” Nichols said. “It gave me more confidence in myself. I really want to play college football, and I had some doubts. But now I know if I give it all I’ve got, I can do whatever I put my mind to.”