A medicine called sports

Editor’s note: This is the final part of a three-part series taking an in-depth look… Editor’s note: This is the final part of a three-part series taking an in-depth look at the psychology of sports fans. Read part one and part two.

Freedom High School was playing its final game of the 2007 football season, and John Challis had yet to play a single down. He had been begging the coach to put him in. It was his senior year, and he would likely never have a chance to play football again.

Finally, at the end of the game, the coach put him in for three plays.

John’s father, Scott Challis, was a nervous wreck. He was proud of his son, but he was worried for his safety, too. Scott knew John would likely get to play in the game, and he had warned his son earlier.

“You’ll get killed out there,” Scott told him.

But John made an argument to which his father had no rebuttal.

“Dad, I’ve got cancer,” he said. “What else could happen to me?”

John was diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma, or liver-lung cancer, in 2006. The doctors didn’t expect him to live through the summer, but John survived another two years before he died on August 19, 2008.

John knew his liver and lung cells were mutating and his immune system was attacking his own organs, but his father said sports gave him something to look forward to and strive for.

Sports are so prevalent in the United States today that stories like John’s are not uncommon. Sports psychologists have found that people who identify with teams and athletes have strong emotional responses, and those emotions can help people heal or cope with death or illness.

John went on several sports adventures during his illness, including an elk hunt sponsored by the Hunt of a Lifetime Foundation, where he shot a 700-pound elk with the help of assistants and supervisors.

“But that didn’t mean nothing to him compared to when he went out and shot one on his own,” Scott said.

One chilly November afternoon, a few weeks before John finally got to play in a football game, he called his dad at work and shouted, “Dad, I got one!”

A sportsman’s club donated a crossbow to John and he took it out into the woods by himself and shot a 10-point deer.

The arrow didn’t immediately kill the deer, so John had to track it through the woods, down over a big hill, before he found the dead animal. By then his cancer was Stage IV.

“That meant the most to him,” Scott said. “Because he did it, and nobody else helped him.”

John’s other sports adventures included a trip to Yankee Stadium to meet the Yankees players and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, attending a Penguins playoff game and meeting the team and Mario Lemieux. He also met the Pirates and Steelers.

“He did more than most people do in two lifetimes,” Scott said. “And that kept him going.”

It was all of these experiences that kept John going toward his ultimate goal — graduating high school with his class.

If John knew that he was going to meet the Penguins in a month, then he knew he had to work toward being healthy enough to attend the game and meet some of his heroes, Scott said.

Using sports as a way to rise above the fear and pain that illnesses bring can be an effective coping strategy.

Stephen Russo, director of sports psychology at Nova Southeastern University, said fans that associate themselves with the team frequently have an emotional response to wins and losses.

“Being a fan in their mind is being associated with the team,” he said. “And they experience the highs and lows right along with the team.”

If a fan experiences those highs, he or she can find the strength to heal and cope, he said. The people who manage to find strength in sports are often inspirational to others, and it is tough to find someone more inspirational than John Challis.

On every one of John’s sports adventures he gave speeches and advice to the people he met. When he visited the Pirates, he gave a speech to the team in the locker room.

“He talked to them about how this could be taken away from you at any given time,” Scott said. “You could hear a pin drop in the locker room.”

One week before his death, John told Ben Roethlisberger at Steelers training camp, “Don’t take this for granted.”

John was never star struck when he met someone famous.

“They were people just like he was,” Scott said. “We were in A-Rod’s penthouse and John was asking him questions like a normal conversation.”

“A-Rod called here about a week and a half before [John] died, and John hung up the phone with him,” Scott said. “He just told him, ‘Hey, I gotta go.’”

But he was always respectful to everyone that he met.

“Everybody was Mr. or Ms. to him,” Scott said. “Mr. Roethlisberger, Mr. Lemieux.”

He met Pitt’s star wide receiver Jon Baldwin while Baldwin was a senior standout at Aliquippa High School. John and Balwdin both graduated high school in 2008, so John was speaking to his peer when talking to Baldwin, but he still referred to him as Mr. Baldwin.

“[Baldwin] was such an elite, great high school athlete. John gave him the respect he thought he deserved,” Scott said.

John never showed any fear. One of his favorite quotes was from a John Wayne movie: “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.”

“For an 18-year-old kid knowing he could die any minute, he was so strong,” Scott said.

Scott said, Freedom isn’t very good at football. John gave the team a speech before its game against their rivals, Elwood City.

Under his baseball cap that he wore frequently, he had inscribed, “Courage + Believe = Life.” John used that notion in the locker room to encourage his teammates to believe in themselves.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the locker room,” Scott said. He remembered thinking, “This ain’t an 18-year-old kid talking.” And Freedom won that night.

“People tell me he was a messenger from God,” Scott said. “I’ll tell ya what, I believe it.”

John’s story soon made it all the way across the country. He was featured in Sports Illustrated. The Versus channel interviewed him on national television, and ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” profiled him. The Challis family is also in talks with a movie producer about making a film about John’s inspiring life. Scott Challis said that this media exposure helped to inspire others, and the family received plenty of letters in the mail confirming John’s inspiration toward others.

“People sent baseballs from all over the country,” Scott said. “Someone even sent us dirt from the field where ‘Field of Dreams’ was filmed.”

John achieved his goal of graduation, but after that, the cancer took over. To the end he was aware that he was dying. When a worker from hospice care came to his house in the summer of 2008, he said, “I know why you’re here. You’re here to make my last days easier for me.”

One day that summer John was bundled up in a blanket because he was so cold, and he sat his father down to tell him something very important.

“I will wear my white football game jersey and my letterman jacket in the casket,” John told his father. “Don’t screw this up.”

His burial clothing wasn’t the only thing he was planning while he was dying.

He realized how beneficial sports were to him in battling cancer, and he wanted other kids in his situation to be able to go on sports adventures similar to the ones he enjoyed.

So John and his baseball coach got together and laid out the groundwork for the John Challis Courage for Life Foundation which helps send high school athletes with life-threatening illnesses on sports adventures.

Scott said that the Make-a-Wish foundation allows you to only have one experience, so if a child is awarded an adventure through the Courage for Life Foundation, then he or she cannot take a Make-a-Wish trip.

“We tell people to take their Make-a-Wish trip first, so it wouldn’t deprive them from my son’s trip,” Scott said.

The first recipient of a sports adventure from the Courage for Life Foundation was Taylor Dettore, a former tennis player at Neshannock High School. She also has cancer and she met John at the hospital the night that John found out about his own cancer.

The Courage for Life Foundation treated Dettore to dinner, a hotel stay and a limo ride to a Penguins playoff game last year. When she arrived at Mellon Arena, the Penguins gave her an autographed Evgeni Malkin jersey.

Her cancer has been in remission for two years.

“I know my son is looking down to tell us we did the right thing to make her the first recipient,” Scott said.

Through sports, John lived out many of his dreams before he died — and he used every opportunity to teach people about life.

He often told the people he met, “It’s not how many breaths you take, it’s what you do with each breath you do take.”