Filed under: Sports Business and Media
BALTIMORE -- Four months from now, Brenda Frese would relish the chance to devise a game plan for her Maryland team to bring the Connecticut women's basketball team's vaunted Division I record winning streak to an end, if it hasn't ended by then.But on a chilly Wednesday morning -- the day after the Huskies won their 89th straight game to pass the UCLA men's team of the 1970s -- Frese's most intricate strategy of the day was getting her two-year-old son, Tyler Thomas, quiet enough to get attached to an intravenous tube in an examination room of the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Oncology Center.
A container of cereal proved to do the trick for Tyler to settle in to accept the chemotherapy that helps him battle the leukemia running through his little body.
Frese's Terps, off to a 10-1 start, have the mix of talented veterans and the No. 2 freshman class to play deep into March. At moments like these, though, where her son's life hangs in the balance, Frese can be forgiven for placing basketball off to the side.
"We all can get tunnel vision in our day-to-day, our work, our jobs," Frese said. "There's such a bigger meaning and so many other things going on. I'm constantly reminded of that when I walk in here and see so many sick people with worse situations than our own. You get the perspective of not taking any single day for granted."
"Our win is about beating leukemia."
Tyler has come a long way -- figuratively and literally -- since Sept. 28, when, in a whirlwind five hours, he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a form of cancer where the body produces an abnormally large number of white blood cells.
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