WOLL ACE A PILLAR OF PERSEVERANCE
Grant Summers overcomes rare genetic disease to excel in the sport he treasures
Grant Summers feels the most at home in a dugout or on the mound of a baseball diamond. No matter what’s going on in his life, the baseball diamond centers him and gives him a sense of purpose and belonging.
Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes’ ace on the mound has been electric this season, as a junior. In 42 innings pitched, he’s allowed only five earned runs and struck out 71. At the plate, he’s mashing the ball, as well, hitting .376 with an on-base percentage of .487.
“I just love competing. As a pitcher, I love controlling the game. There’s nothing like traveling on a bus with your team, your boys and winning games. You don’t get that kind of camaraderie with any other sport, in my opinion,” Summers said of his love of the game.
“I have the most fun with it.” When he’s not on the mound, you can find Summers on the basketball court playing guard or center for his dad Marc Summers in the winter. In the fall, he’s on the football field once as a center and defensive linemen, but now he specializes in punting after sustaining a shoulder injury as a freshman.
“It was a labrum tear on his left shoulder,” his mom Amanda Summers said.
“To get it fixed is a long recovery, and he didn’t want to miss baseball. Thank God, it was his left shoulder. He was just getting the itch to play sports again and (Lakes) is a small school, so he wants to play with his buddies,” Marc added.
That setback would deter most athletes, but not Grant. Summers is driven because he has faced and overcome setbacks before of a different magnitude.
When Grant was four, he was rushed to the hospital after he came out of the bathroom of his parent’s home in Clarkston.
“It looked like a two liter of Coke was in the toilet bowl,” Marc remembered vividly.
“He went to the hospital right away. When they were trying to diagnose it, the first time, he was there 10 days. Then, it kind of cured itself. Why? Nobody
knows. It’s just one of those rare diseases that we’re still learning about.
“His second stint was when he was six, and he was in the hospital for about a week. When he was eight, or nine he was in the hospital for 19 days. Something triggers it, and we don’t know what.”
What was afflicting Grant is something called Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome or aHUS. aHUS is a very rare genetic disease that causes tiny blood clots to form in your blood vessels, blocking blood flow to important organs. aHUS can cause kidney failure, heart disease and other serious health problems.
“We just wanted him out of that hospital. That was the only thing on our mind. You don’t know how to act in those situations. I stayed every night at the hospital with him.
“We’d try to watch baseball, and make things somewhat normal given the circumstances, but he’d be so lethargic because everything was failing,” Marc said.
“He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t do anything without help because he was so weak.”
Each time Grant was in the hospital the answers seemed to become more bleak. But in his third stint when he was eight, his doctor informed the Summers of a treatment that could be the Hail Mary the family and Grant needed.
“We had a doctor tell us that there’s a drug that isn’t approved by the FDA yet, but that he was a big believer in,” Marc said.
“He thought it could change things for the better. We were asking the doctors if he was going to live, you know? We’d try anything.”
The trial drug is called Soliris, which has since gained its FDA approval. It has a hefty price tag of $135,000 a dose, but it is a first-in-class terminal complement inhibitor that is used to target uncontrolled complement activation. It is prescribed for patients with aHUS to inhibit complement-mediated TMA (the destruction of red blood cells).
Soliris has the tendency to enhance red blood cell count and platelets. It tends to reverse acute kidney damage and may prevent kidney failure.
“Treatment isn’t fun. I had to go down to Children’s Hospital to get my infusion every two weeks. It was an hour drive, so you think about it on the way there, as you try to fall back asleep because we left at six in the morning,” Grant recalled. “I never really went to school those days so I was behind on things and had to catch up on them.”
When Marc and Amanda couldn’t drive Grant downtown for his infusion treatments, his grandfather stepped in and drove Grant, a time Grant fondly remembers.
“It was the same thing every morning we’d go. He’d bring me an egg and cheese sandwich. I’d eat that, and then pass right back out in the car. But on the way back, we’d always stop for sub sandwich in Berkley, near the high school,” he said.“We’d talk all the time during my infusions and it was a great bonding experience, and we grew closer because of that.”
When there wasn’t time for talking, Grant would watch cartoons and other TV shows on a tablet at the hospital to pass the time. Depending on the pacing of the infusion, treatment could take up to two hours. Now, he mostly sleeps during his sessions which he can take in the comforts of home.
“It’s just a part of his life. It’s just what he does. We try to keep it as normal and part of our routine as possible. It’s to the point where we’re like Darrin is coming today, and he’s good with it,” Amanda said.“We had a breakthrough in January where he was put on a newer medication. It took a couple of months to get him to a point where we could put him on this new medication because the previous one has a lot of scary side effects.”
Now that the major setback is under full control, and Grant is thriving, he had to deal with his shoulder. He recovered from it thanks to physical therapy, but it popped out again after he switched up positions on the football field.
“We all kind of agreed and said we’re done, and he was moved to punter” Marc said.
“Grant did an ATA Program for six weeks, and that truly was the big determining factor. He wanted to focus on baseball and pitching. He did the program for six months, and he wouldn’t have been able to do the program if he had surgery,” Amanda added.
Summers has earned back-to-back All-Catholic honors in basketball, and newly found success as a punter that is starting to garner interest from colleges. But no matter what it all comes back to baseball for Grant.
That love was fortified back in 2016 thanks to Lakes grad and New York Mets Field Manager Chris Newell when Newell was the coach of the Birmingham Bloomfield Beavers of the USPBL. He is also Grant’s hitting instructor.
“He put me in as a bat boy the first year of the league (2016). Just being around all of those professional players grew my love for the game. You get to see how hard they work day-in and day-out, and how much they enjoy the game,” Grant said. “The players also got me involved with chants, batting practice, just all of it. It brought a whole new experience and changed my point of view of the game. It stuck with me.”
Summers holds a 3.89 GPA at Lakes, is a member of the National Honor Society and still has another year of sports ahead of him as he’s only a junior. He also has Comerica Park on the horizon as Lakes will play for a CHSL Championship later this week.
“Since Day 1 it’s been talked about by all of us,” Grant said after last week’s split with Royal Oak Shrine. “I’ve wanted this game for so long.
“My uncle (Dan Noble) is the coach of Shrine, and I’ve never beaten him until today in this one game. I’ve just never wanted a game so bad. I want to go to Comerica, and I’ve been dreaming about it. I just wanted to slam the door shut on them.”
With Summers’ determination, grit, fortitude, Lakes has an opportunity to claim a CHSL championship for the first time since 2005, the team has already grabbed a share of the regular season Intersectional Championship thanks to stellar performance on Tuesday against Shrine, where he earned a save in a come-from-behind win.