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the full backstory about his health. After his junior year in high school, when he shined at USA Volleyball Boys’ Junior Nationals with his club team, 949 Volleyball located in San Juan, Capistrano, California, he drew interest from college coaches. Among them was David Kniffin, head coach of the highly successful program at University of Califor- nia at Irvine, who told Vorenkamp he’d be a great fit on his team. “He played with such passion,” Kniffin says. “Before we knew anything about what he had gone through, I thought, ‘Wow, this kid really loves playing.’ He looked okay as a volleyball player at that time – a little raw, but I thought he had potential. And the way he talked to his team- mates, he obviously had leadership skills. “And then you start to hear his story, and you think, ‘This guy’s a fighter and, beyond a fighter, he’s a winner.’ He knows how to truly compete and he knows how to be fully appreciative of the opportunity he has to play volleyball at a level that someone who has gone through life with good health wouldn’t be able to appreciate.” Ultimately, Vorenkamp came to the conclusion that his best option would be to attend Berkeley’s College of Letters & Sci- ence and pursue a big new goal: gaining ad- mission to Berkeley’s business school, which accepts fewer than half of the applicants from its own campus. Health was a factor in his decision. During the fall of his senior year in high school, another tumor was discovered on his lung. He had it surgically removed in December, but then another tumor surfaced, also on his lung. It was removed in July. “My senior year, I would sometimes go to school for one or two periods and then go home, and then toward the end of the year I was missing a lot of school,” he says. “I kept my grades up, but that’s when I had kind of a reality check and wondered whether I could keep playing volleyball.” His dad, Pieter Vorenkamp, says: “When he got the notice [of acceptance] from Berkeley in May, I think he was comfortable saying goodbye to a professional volleyball career. That was a huge goal in his life. He had been talking about it since seventh grade. But I think it started to sink in with him: ‘Can I do this given my physical condition when I have to potentially deal with more of these relapses and surgeries?’ And then he got this fantastic alternative option.” No matter what direction his volleyball career takes going forward, there’s plenty for him to look back and smile on. As a senior at


JSerra this year he helped the varsity boys’ team to its second playoff appearance in the program’s history, and he did it play- ing alongside his younger brother, Patrick, also a setter, who is now a 6-4 sophomore with great potential. In club volleyball, Tim played in a 6-2 system as an opposite in the


“He was so good at disguising it. He would never let anybody know, and you could not tell. He would never dog it, and he would never be last in running lines to try to conserve energy. He would always go full speed.”


front row and setter in the back row, helping his 949 team qualify for junior nationals his sophomore year (he had to miss the tourna- ment because of treatment) and again his junior year, when they finished fifth. His coach at 949, Justin DeBlasio, notes


that Vorenkamp’s blocking skills are “off the chart” and says there were never any outward indications that Vorenkamp was tired or in pain, even though, clearly, he often was. “He was so good at disguising it,” DeBla- sio says. “He would never let anybody know, and you could not tell. He would never dog it, and he would never be last in running lines to try to conserve energy. He would always go full speed.”


Full speed continues at Berkeley, where he considered playing club volleyball but decided he was too busy with classes and other activities to commit that much time to practice. “Life of a college kid, I guess you could say,” he said in a recent text. “I’m lov- ing it up here.”


The medication he’s taking now is brand


new, just approved in May by the FDA. “Some long Latin name,” he says. “I can’t even spell it.” This form of treatment, which works by boosting the immune system, has proven effective with melanoma patients. “It’s cool because the medication I’m tak- ing is always updating and getting better,” Tim says. “I don’t want to be too optimistic, but it sounds almost like [this] could be a cure.” Vorenkamp says he tries not to think about whatever the long-term prognosis might be. “I don’t even want to hear it if there is one, because with my optimism I want to be able to live to 80,” he says. “It would be pretty cool to live to 80 battling this stuff. I feel like eventually there will be a cure. Something like this, even though it’s big, shouldn’t stop what you do normally. I want to keep cancer a small part of my life.”


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


Justin DeBlasio, Vorenkamp’s club volleyball coach


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