Harriton Football Player Survives Cancer To Return to Field

Friday night marks the beginning of high school football season. The usual rituals will take place: marching bands lining up, big crowds filling the stands, cheerleaders on the sidelines working on their routines. The players, fired up for a new season, will pound their teammates' pads and slap their helmets. 

Somewhere in that festive environment, a new ritual will take hold. Austin Wortley will steal away for a moment by himself, look down at the field and be happy over the simplest of things: He’s wearing cleats again. For that, he'll be feeling grateful. 

At kickoff, no one in the stadium may feel more alive than the 6-foot, 205-pound senior. He'll look like most of the other players, but beneath his uniform will be reminders. Just below his shoulder pads is a long red scar that cuts down his chest. Just under his helmet's right earhole is an oval-shaped dark blotch. They’re the scars from Wortley’s battle with cancer.

This time last year, Wortley was playing football—as a two-way player, no less—for . While doing so, he very likely already had symptoms of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer originating from white blood cells that strikes young adults between the ages of 15 and 35. What’s remarkable is that Wortley didn’t really pick up on it until wrestling season, when the right side of his neck became swollen. Even then, the diagnosis came by happenstance.

Colleen Wortley, Austin’s mother, was on the phone with an orthopedic doctor, Bradley Smith, getting an update about Austin’s older brother Connor, who had torn ligaments in his thumb. She asked Smith if he would take a look at Austin, who had been feeling drained, thinking he might have calcium deposits in his neck. Smith told them to come right in.

The Longest Day

Colleen can’t remember the exact minute they walked into Smith’s office, but she’ll never forget the day: Thursday, December 30, 2010. Smith could tell instantly that something wasn’t right—the lump on the right side of Austin’s neck had ballooned to the size of a golf ball.

Hodgkin’s presents in a variety of ways, with night sweats and shortness of breath among them. But Wortley never overtly experienced any of those typical side effects. He thought it was mononucleosis. Colleen didn’t know what to think, but something wasn’t right with her youngest child.

“You remember days like that, when we went to see Dr. Smith,” Colleen recalled.

It was written all over the doctor’s face, she said.

“Colleen definitely picked up that I was concerned, and she was definitely worried,” said Smith, who works for in Bryn Mawr (and who was the first to notice former Conestoga and Boston College football star Mark Herzlich’s cancer). “Austin had swollen nodules around the base of his neck and collar bone. That was a big sign of concern. We spoke about getting some blood work done and an x-ray of his chest. But I had a real good idea of what it was.”

So began the longest day of Austin Wortley’s life. He went from Smith’s office that morning to a local diagnostic center, where a radiologist pointed out a mass in his chest. Later he was sent to the Pediatric Imaging Center of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in King of Prussia and “some type of lymphoma” was discussed.

“That’s when I first heard ‘Hodgkin’s lymphoma’ and ‘cancer,’” Wortley recalls. “I remember being really calm throughout the whole thing, but seeing my mother get emotional, that told me something was up. It was when we went to the oncology center when it registered that I had something more than what I thought.

“I’ll be honest—initially, I wasn’t concerned with the mortality of the situation at all. It was more like disdain. I was angry at the situation. My sports would be taken away. I made a goal with myself that I would only miss one season of anything.”

But at the time, his lip began to quiver, and tears slowly dripped down his face. He wanted to be brave for his mother and his family, who took the news hard—but he couldn’t hold it.

“I remember walking with one of the nurses to get more blood drawn ... and her telling me that everything was going to be OK; they were all great that day,” Wortley said. “It just upset me that my family was upset. My mother was crying and that bothered me more than anything.”

Within eight days of being diagnosed, he was undergoing chemotherapy treatments. He tried to live as normally as a 16-year-old could. But chemo weakens the immune system, to a point where a common cold can lead to big trouble. And the 12-week, three-month process sometimes meant Austin missed school.

His blonde locks went fast, too. Mouth sores sometimes required a hospital stay from Saturday night until Monday morning. It was always something new. It depended on the day and the week.

‘Cancer Mode’

The rock was Colleen, though she would be the last to take any credit for anything. Sacrifices—and there were many by everyone in the Wortley home—had to be made. Harriton teachers came to the house to tutor Austin. Friends and relatives stopped by regularly.

“There is a strong recovery rate for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but you’re constantly afraid that your child will not recover,” Colleen said. “With Austin and the cancer, the other fear is not just the cancer, but the infection, and how his body was beaten down by the chemicals and treatments. You don’t sleep and you worry.

“As a parent, you go into cancer mode, scheduling appointments, doing the testing. ... Austin just wanted to be a typical 16-year-old. He didn’t want to be the ‘cancer kid.’ He would have done anything else to have that attention on him. The community and Harriton were amazing. You find out a lot about people with things like this, and we did.”

She discovered something about her own family as well: “It made us stronger. In that respect, it was a gift to us.”

Another gift, a bigger one, came on March 30, 2011. Colleen was running errands and scheduled to pick Austin up at around 5 p.m. that afternoon at Harriton. Her cell phone rang. It was Austin’s oncologist, saying his scans were clear—he beat it.

Five months later, Austin Wortley will start for the Rams when they host Chichester on Friday night at 7 p.m.

‘It will always be a part of me’

“It was an emotional moment for me and our family,” Colleen said. “The chemo did what it was supposed to do, because halfway through, Austin’s doctors weren’t optimistic and they were preparing us for another six months, which would have meant more chemo and radiation. I doubt there would have been any football this year at all if his treatment was prolonged.”

Wortley has a full head of blonde hair again. The 6½-inch tumor in his chest is gone, as is the 3½-inch tumor in his neck. He carries a 4.4 GPA out of a weighted 5.0 and he scored a 2,140 (of a maximum 2,400) on his SAT. He’s looking to play football for Cornell or MIT and major in business.

More importantly, Wortley looks at the world around him far more differently than other 17-year-olds.

“I was angry, but I never had that ‘why me’ moment that some people have with cancer,” he said. “One of my previous teachers that beat cancer told me that I would appreciate all of the little things. I do. I always thought I would be playing football, and wrestling and playing rugby again. ... It will always be a part of me, a good part.

“I’m happy to be alive. I never thought I’d say something like that. But you have to experience something like this to know.”