Steve Mabry leads team to playoffs while battling cancer

‘Team together’ | News | polkio.com

PERRYDALE — “You have a 30 percent chance of survival.”

Those were the words Steve Mabry heard after learning of his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

“Well, I’ll take those odds,” Mabry said in response.

His doctor stared at him.

“Yeah, you didn’t tell me 10 percent, or you didn’t tell me I had no chance,” Mabry said. “So we’ll take that 30 percent and flip it upside down.”

Flipped it upside down, he did. As of October, Mabry was declared cancer-free after a nearly year-long battle.

The thing that kept him going?

Coaching the Perrydale Pirates football team, a position he’s been in for 11 years.

“My whole thing was to get back to do this (coaching),” Mabry said. “It’s the whole thing that motivates me. This is part of my life.”

Mabry was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a cancer most commonly found in adolescents.

“It blew everyone away,” he said. “It’s a very fast-acting bone cancer, and it’s usually in a bone or a joint, and they usually have to amputate it or cut pieces of it out. Such a small percent of adults get it, it’s not even a statistic.”

The first tumor was discovered after Mabry fell off his roof during last year’s football season and had an MRI done on his shoulder.

“They called me the next day, which never happens,” Mabry said. “I knew something was not right, and they said, ‘You have a four-inch mass in your spine that’s right above your C4 and C5.’”

Before his surgery to remove that tumor, his surgeon at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland found another mass, this time in Mabry’s neck just below his collarbone.

“So they removed part of the first tumor, but couldn’t remove the second one because it was so intertwined in my spinal cord, which was not good,” Mabry said.

The prognosis did not look good. Over the next several months, he was put on intensive chemotherapy treatments: Three times a month, for five days a week.

“It’s an aggressive chemotherapy usually given to kids,” Mabry said, “because they’re far more resilient than adults, and I just said, ‘Well I’m going to be the biggest kid you’re gonna have, so I’ll fit in here.’”

Mabry was too sick to coach spring football — he was in the hospital for 30 days at one point — but by the time fall football practice started, he was out on the field. He may have been sitting down in a chair on the sidelines because he was too weak to stand up, but he was out there with his team.

When he was unable to make practice because of treatments, his assistant coaches stepped in for him.

“Chris (Gubrud) and Troy (Trembly) were invaluable in keeping things going the right direction,” Mabry said.

From the first day of his diagnosis, Mabry made a promise to his team, most of whom he’s watched grow up: “I will not miss a game,” he told them. “Whatever it takes, I will not miss a game. I owe that to you guys, and I couldn’t miss it, I just love it too much; it’s too much a part of me.”

He made good on that promise — even if it meant ripping out the IVs during a blood transfusion one day so he could get to a game in time.

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Football is what saved Steve Mabry’s life.

After practice every night, assistant coach Chris Gubrud would call Mabry, who would be hooked up to three IVs at a time, “and I’d ask, ‘Well, how’d we look out there tonight?’” Mabry said.

He was always upfront with his team about the diagnosis, and the prognosis.

When senior running back Josh Crawford found out about his coach’s diagnosis, he didn’t know what to think.

“It was a bit of a shock. I didn’t know how to feel about it because I didn’t know how severe it was,” he said. “And him being in treatment every so often made me realize how serious it was, and it helped me be motivated to work harder, because if our team did well that would motivate him to work harder and fight through his treatment and all his struggles. So it was kind of like we were all battling together.”

That became the theme of the season: Battling together. On the back of each player’s helmet was a sticker that said “Battle” to honor Mabry.

The Pirates ended the season 4-1 in league, and nabbed a spot in playoffs for the first time in four years before losing 22-14 to Dufur.

When senior quarterback David Domes was sidelined with an injury in the first game of the season, Crawford stepped up to replace him — playing the position of quarterback for the first time in his life.

“We were down 22, and then won that game by 22 points,” Mabry said.

He was so proud of the way his team fought this season.

“It was a great year for us,” Mabry said.

Team together. That’s been the Pirates’ motto since Mabry began coaching, and it weighed a little heavier on the players and the coaches this year.

“Everything we do, win or lose, we do together,” Mabry said. “Team together. And I think the kids take that to heart.”

The support Mabry said he felt from the Perrydale community, the high school administration and his family was unwavering.

“The support I got from Perrydale and my family, they were crazy supportive — all they did was basically lock down their lives for six months to get me back and forth up to Portland. I’m a very fortunate person and it’s a very humbling experience.”

Mid-October was when he received the news that he was cancer-free.

“I’m good, I feel much better,” Mabry said. “I had my last round of chemo mid-October. And then I got fantastic news after that — the tumor in my neck is gone, the radiation dissolved it, which was not our expectations at all. Our expectations were to have surgery again and another four to six months of chemo, but I got an all-clear that there were no other signs of cancer. Every month I have to go have an MRI because it’s such a fast-acting cancer that for the first year, any spots at all, they have to put me back on chemo. It’s a miracle in itself.”

When he received the good news, he gathered his football team together. They looked at him, and he looked at them and he said, “I came out here to say, ‘Thank you.’ For keeping me motivated to get through all of this, because right now I am cancer-free with no tumor. Now we can go out this week and win and have nothing else on our mind.

“It was a good moment for us. Having this job and the support from my family basically kept me alive.”