Extraordinary Siblings from an Ordinary Family

By Matthew Janik, Assistant Director of Athletic Communication

This story is part of the Northeast-10 Conference's "Student-Athlete Spotlight" series, designed to tell the story of the conference's student-athletes beyond the field of competition.

There is an old saying in sports that there is no 'I' in "team." Taken at face value, it is a cautionary tale that no individual can win a game on their own, that a team is the sum of its parts, that working together will yield the best result. If you take a deeper look at it though, you can extrapolate the idea even further. If you take a deeper look at it, you realize that no student-athlete got to where they are all by themselves. You realize that there is something beyond the field that's pushing them, driving them, making them tick.

In short, behind every student-athlete, there is a story.

This is how we end up with a field hockey story that has so very, very little to do with field hockey.

***

Lauren L'Heureux could be any one of the hundreds of young women playing college field hockey in New England. Through three seasons in Rindge, she has three goals and one assist for seven points. She has played in a majority of the Ravens games over the course of her career, but hasn't started many of them. She gets named to the Northeast-10 Conference Weekly Honor Roll every now and again.

She is a two-time All-Academic Squad selection by the National Field Hockey Coaches Association and is well on her way to a third in 2010. She carries a grade-point average north of 3.60 while majoring in biology.

Like any of the hundreds of student-athletes at Franklin Pierce, she balances the athletic needs of practice and games with the academic needs of study hall and homework. She spends the winters trudging to class under a New Hampshire sky that at times can seem eternally gray.

But then you ask her about her brother. You ask Lauren about her brother and her eyes light up.

***

Colin L'Heureux could be the younger brother of any one of those hundreds of young women playing college field hockey in New England. Endlessly supportive, he almost never misses a game.

"He thinks he knows everything; he thinks he owns this school," said Lauren. "I'm like 'Colin, you don't even go here!'"

"He thinks it's great. He loves coming up here. [Current/former Ravens field hockey players] Beth [Haight] and [Christine] McKay and Dee [Danielle Dolan] treat him so well. Beth's parents love him."

He's just like any other loving little brother whose older sister plays field hockey in college.

Except for all that time in the hospital.

***

Colin had his first MRI when he was 18 months old after his parents noticed he had not begun crawling when they expected him to. He was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis type I (NF-1).

NF-1 is a genetic disorder which affects the nervous system. Though associated with learning difficulties, vision problems and epilepsy, the most visible effect of NF-1 is the growth of tumors. While they are usually benign but abnormal growths on nerve endings, between eight and 12 percent of NF-1 patients develop cancerous growths.

Colin will always have to take anti-seizure medicine and has had four surgeries to remove tumors. The first was when he was in fourth grade in October of 2003, when he had a craniotomy to remove a tumor from his parietal lobe. The tumor was benign.

The second and third surgeries were over the summer of 2010. One was in June, when a tumor was partially removed from his brain stem. Again, the tumor was benign, and it continues to be monitored, because it could always grow back.

The next surgery was on July 23, 2010, to remove an eight-centimeter tumor from his wrist. The biopsy on that one came back malignant. The tumor was cancerous.

"The one on his wrist looked like a fist was just in there," said Lauren. "It was huge, it was hard to the touch. At the pace it grew, the doctors had already told us that the test will probably come back malignant, that the biopsy will probably be cancerous."

"My family kind of had time to adjust to that. Like, even though we still hoped and prayed that it wouldn't be, we kind of had to face reality on that one."

The surgery was successful and the tumor was completely removed. Colin has had monthly MRIs ever since, because the cancer could always come back.

So, all the time in the hospital and the operations have certainly given Colin an experience different from what most people will ever face. However, just the same as any other teenage boy, he still found ways to manipulate his big sister.

"I spoiled the crap out of him this summer," said Lauren. "I made bets with him that I would be for sure he wasn't going to win. But, he'd do something to win and I'd have to take him out to dinner, or take him out for a Blizzard, or do something like that. This kid can eat like there's no tomorrow, so I pretty much screwed up on that."

"The summer before, I'd go out with my friends all the time; I was never really home. This summer, I pretty much was home every single night. If I wanted to hang out with people, I had people come to the house and I did a lot of things with Colin this summer."

Also like any other guy his age, Colin likes baseball. No, check that, Colin LOVES baseball.

***

Colin has grown to idolize T.J. Ferguson, a junior pitcher on the Franklin Pierce baseball team. T.J. spent this past summer pitching with the Keene Swamp Bats of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. The L'Heureux family hails from Sanford, Maine, which fields the Sanford Mainers, another team in the NECBL.

Colin was excited to meet T.J. when the Swamp Bats came to Sanford in June. Unfortunately, the way it worked out, Colin was still in the hospital recovering from his brain stem surgery.

"He was very upset and I told him I would take him to Keene when the Mainers went there," said Lauren.

However, the Mainers made the return trip to visit the Swamp Bats on July 23, which wound up being the date of Colin's wrist surgery. The two eventually met this fall at one of Lauren's field hockey games.

When Keene visited Sanford, T.J. had all his fellow Swamp Bats sign a baseball for Colin and gave it to Lauren to deliver. When she came home after the game, Colin had just gotten home from the hospital, ahead of schedule.

"When I came home, I walked into the house and I was holding it," said Lauren. "He gets up and he's walking really slow and he's really groggy and he comes up: 'Is that my baseball?'"

"First thing! Not 'Hi Lauren, nice to see you,' just: 'Is that my baseball?'"

"Yes, it's your baseball."

"Where's T.J.'s signature?"

Though Colin loves his baseball, he is, first and foremost, Ravens field hockey's biggest fan.

"Colin could care less about anything else," said Lauren. "This fall the thing he was most concerned about was missing my field hockey games. He wasn't concerned about 'oh my god, the tumor in my arm that is massive is cancerous and could affect my whole body.' No, he was worried about coming to Franklin Pierce field hockey games and seeing who he considers his sisters: he's in love with Dee, Kim [Jaksina], K-Nort [lacrosse player Kristen Norton], Beth, McKay, Jordan [Baillargeon], Sim [Kayla Simeone]. He loves them all and that's what he was most concerned about."

***

The fourth and most-recent surgery came just two weeks ago, during the Thanksgiving break. Colin had to have surgery to remove tumors from the same wrist that had been operated on over the summer. In addition, two of his lymph nodes had enlarged and were removed as a precaution to attempt to limit the opportunities for cancer to spread through his body.

The surgery on his wrist wound up far more complicated than anticipated, as it took over six hours to complete. The tumor had swelled and wrapped itself around the median nerve. Doctors had to remove 7.5 centimeters of his median nerve to extract the entire tumor. Furthermore, a tumor had developed on the ends of the tendons which had been cut during Colin's surgery. It required still further incisions in his hand to remove.

All of this on the day before Thanksgiving was all but certain to juggle the family's plans for the holiday.

"My Dad told me that Colin was going to be in a lot of pain and that they probably weren't going to make it home for Thanksgiving," said Lauren. "I was ready to make the drive up. There was no way we weren't spending Thanksgiving together."

True to his past form though, Colin began his recovery ahead of schedule and was out of the hospital before Thanksgiving was brought to him. The holiday dinner would be home in Sanford after all. One thing though: Lauren was the only one back in Sanford to prepare.

"So, the next thing my dad said to me [after saying that Colin was on his way home] was 'You ready to cook the bird?'"

Oh boy.

"My dad, in anticipation of complications, had already made the potatoes and stuffing," noted Lauren. "All I had to do was wrestle with the turkey to get it out of the packaging take the plastic ring around the legs off and season it."

Colin came home groggy from all the medications during and after the surgery, but perked up once he dug into the Thanksgiving feast.

"And he said I did a good job cooking the turkey," said Lauren. "That's all that really mattered to me."

***

The word "hero" gets thrown around an awful lot, especially in a sports setting. Players who score big goals or hit long home runs or shoot clutch three-pointers are labeled heroes by the media and looked up to by countless kids across the country. If anything, sports tends to dilute the idea of the hero.

But, when you hear Lauren call Colin her hero, you know there's nothing but sincerity behind it.

"He makes me smile and I'm so proud of him and how he moves from one thing to the next," said Lauren. "He is always looking forward and never lets anything slow him down. Sometimes he drives me crazy, but he always makes me smile. I'd be lost without him."

Colin refuses to let surgery onto the short list of things that can slow him down. That resilience is certainly on the long list of ways he inspires and impresses both his family and others.

"This kid is ridiculous," said Lauren. "When he had surgery when he was in the fourth grade, he had surgery on like a Tuesday or a Wednesday and they said 'oh, he'll probably be in the hospital for a week.' So, my aunt and uncle were going to bring us up to Dartmouth [Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.] on Saturday to go see him. My parents called Saturday morning as we're walking out the door: 'Don't bother, they're already sending us home.'"

After his July surgery, Colin came home sooner than expected, too.

"He's had two brain surgeries now and was home within a matter of days after both of them," added Lauren. "I couldn't believe it. He's an animal."

Behind every student-athlete is a story. Sometimes they give you perspective and show you where that student-athlete comes from. Sometimes they show teenagers who have matured beyond their years by growing up in under-privileged circumstances. Sometimes they remind you why we spend so much time watching so many games to begin with.

Sometimes, they leave you with a little brother who's a hero to his big sister and a big sister who had to help save Thanksgiving.

Sometimes, they leave you with new heroes.

"I don't think I could go through half the stuff he goes through," said Lauren. "No way."

"No way."

***

We know it's the beginning of the holiday season and money is always tight this time of year. However, if this story touched you, or put a smile on your face, or just taught you something, Lauren would greatly appreciate a donation, however big or small, to David's House (http://www.davids-house.org). David's House provides a free place to stay for families whose ill or injured children are receiving treatment at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H.