MORE THAN A GAME Living


by Don Patterson Photo: DON LIEBIG


strong


Cancer did not stop Tim Vorenkamp from playing volleyball, which has been a big part of his cure


T


im Vorenkamp’s fi ght with cancer began fi ve years ago when he was in eighth grade. His treatment has included round after round of chemo- therapy, radiation and multiple surgeries. It has also included volleyball.


His mom, Petra Vorenkamp, remembers some of his roughest days during the chemo treatments, days you would never imagine that a kid could muster up the strength to go to the gym and practice.


“He would be throwing up and look- ing pale and lying in bed all day, and then he would come out with his shoes on and I would think, ‘Okay, I guess we’re going to volleyball,’” she says. “Somehow he would


38 | VOLLEYBALLUSA • Digital Issue at usavolleyball.org/mag


always fi nd the motivation to walk onto the court and just look like nothing was wrong. Volleyball would always keep him going – fi ghting, fi ghting, fi ghting. He just wanted to play.” For Tim, volleyball was therapy. And it was therapy without all the nasty side effects. “Volleyball has always been an escape for me,” he said in August, less than a week


before leaving home in Laguna Niguel, California, to begin his freshman year at University of California at Berkeley. “Every time I played volleyball, it would be the only thing I could think about. It was really cool because three or four times a week I would have two hours where I could just play and have fun.”


It was actually on the volleyball court in 2010 that he fi rst realized something was


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