At age 8, Taylor Voloch’s world went dark in a third-grade classroom at Dassa McKinney Elementary in West Sunbury — her brain and life threatened by a tumor the size of a baseball. She would face two surgeries, a year of chemotherapy, and physical therapy to learn to walk again, to control her left side again.

At 19, her mind is clear as she prepares to walk the 6,514 yards of the Lake Course at Chautauqua Golf Club in western New York as the first women’s golfer in Butler County Community College history to compete in a national championship tournament.

It was a just over a decade ago when her father, Joe Voloch, nearly fainted at Allegheny Health Network’s Grove City Hospital after being told why his migraine-prone daughter suddenly could not see one morning after she arrived in the third-grade classroom in the Moniteau School District.

“Mr. Voloch, can you sit down?” Taylor’s father recalled the physician asking after his daughter underwent an MRI that afternoon. “He told me, ‘We found a mass in the back of her head.’

“My mind,” Joe said, “was spinning. I was very close to passing out.”

Joe was advised to take his daughter immediately to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where relatives began to arrive in the pediatric waiting room.

“I knew something was up because I could tell people were panicking,” Taylor recalled. “I don’t think it really clicked until I got to children’s hospital that something was wrong.”

She was not told she may be in danger of dying from the fluid accumulating in her brain, Taylor said.

“For a kid, that is not something that you can really think of,” she said. “Like you’re just thinking that you are so young, you haven’t even started your life.”

But around the corner from where she lay on a gurney in an examination room in Pittsburgh, “I could hear my parents crying.”

“Are we near the end?” Taylor’s mother, Angie, recalled fearing the evening of Nov. 4, 2014.

“That’s my little girl,” Joe said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Because migraines were common in their family, Taylor’s pediatrician and physicians at emergency rooms she frequented diagnosed hers as such and prescribed medications, Angie said.

“But then in third grade, I came into class and all of a sudden I could not see,” Taylor said.

Angie demanded that her daughter’s pediatrician order an MRI.

Pilocytic astrocytoma is a typically benign and slow-growing brain tumor that affects about 1 in 100,000 children, according to the National Library of Medicine, which states that complications can occur if the tumor is not promptly and effectively treated.

The West Sunbury girl’s tumor was aside her cerebellum, Joe said.

“They didn’t know how she could be functioning,” Angie said of discussions with physicians at the children’s hospital, “and how her symptoms did not match the size of the tumor that was in her brain.

“She shouldn’t have been able to walk. She shouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

Taylor underwent emergency surgery the next morning.

The 10-year survival rate, according to the National Library of Medicine, is approximately 95 percent if the tumor is completely resected.

“They weren’t able to remove everything,” Joe said. “There was still some residual part of the tumor that was attached to the brain.”

“They said,” Angie recalled, “that a lot of times the rest would just die off on its own.”

Taylor would have MRIs each month for a year. Later ones revealed the tumor had begun to grow again.

“It was pushing into an area near Taylor’s brain stem,” Angie said, “and surgery would be risky because there could be disabilities from a second surgery, especially where the tumor was.”

The growth began to encircle the 9-year-old’s cerebellum.

“The part of your brain controls your coordination, balance, and they didn’t want to jeopardize that because they did not know what would happen,” Taylor said.

Instead of a second surgery, the family opted for chemotherapy.

A port was placed under the 10-year-old’s right shoulder in November 2016. Taylor had chemotherapy each month for the next year.

“I’d be sick after the treatments,” Taylor said. “I felt like I’d have the flu. I would throw up. I lost weight. I drank a lot of ginger ale.”

Taylor’s older brother, Dylan, and younger brother, Tyson, “would rub her back while she was vomiting,” Angie said. “She would say, ‘I’m so sorry.’”

“This girl,” Joe said, “just wanted to go to school, be with her friends. And for seven to 10 days after the treatment she was sick.”

The Make-A-Wish Foundation, which assists critically ill children, learned about Taylor and contacted her family.

Taylor chose to visit the Malibu Dude Ranch in Milford, an eastern Pennsylvania town surrounded by forestland.

“I got to ride horses every day all day for a week,” Taylor said. “And then I ended up doing cattle drives and archery, a lot of cool outdoorsy things with my family.”

Her chemotherapy regimen ended.

The tumor returned.

“When it came back I was angry,” Taylor recalled, “because I didn’t understand why I had to go through it again.”

The options: A round of different chemotherapy accompanied by radiation – “given her age and that she was still growing, they said radiation would definitely have long-term effects on her,” Angie said – or to undergo the second surgery deemed earlier to be risky.

“It was probably more of a gut-wrenching decision than it was for the first surgery,” Angie said. “There were so many complications … We had to decide about chemo, are we going to pump this into her and if it doesn’t work, we’re going to have to do the surgery again. And there were the long-term effects of chemo.”

Eleven-year-old Taylor had a second surgery Feb. 13, 2018. The operation successfully removed the tumor but left her with permanent nerve damage on her left side.

“I had to retrain to walk, to use my hands,” Taylor said. “My coordination was all messed up. I went through a lot of physical therapy. I used to not be able to control where my arm was going. They had me try to eat with my left hand to try to regain my coordination. And instead of my fork going to my mouth, I remember it hitting my forehead all the time.”

“I kept thinking, ‘Man, I hope this little girl can do it,’” Joe said.

Taylor learned to walk and control her left side again, and to play golf from her family on a par-3 course. She kept at it, even when the odds — and sometimes her own balance — were against her.

She joined the Moniteau High golf team in her sophomore year and averaged a 50 over nine holes as a senior.

At BC3, she’s not just a golfer. She’s a presidential scholar, a student ambassador and this fall, will be the vice president of Rho Phi, BC3’s chapter of the international honor society Phi Theta Kappa.

“She is so active at our college,” BC3 golf coach Bill Miller said. “She’s just a good reflection of what we are all about.”

Taylor and her mother have raised $5,000 each to benefit pediatric cancer research. Earlier this month, they completed a 21-mile CureSearch Ultimate Hike near Massanutten, Va., and in April 2022, a 28-mile CureSearch Foothills Trail hike in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Next week, the 19-year-old with a baseball-sized cavity near her cerebellum once filled by the tumor will compete in the fourth National Junior College Athletic Association Division III women’s national championship tournament in Chautauqua, N.Y.

She plans to graduate from BC3 in December with an associate degree in psychology, and pursue a bachelor’s degree in the field toward her goal of becoming a high school guidance counselor.

“I definitely think I could have been a different person than I am with the things that happened,” Taylor said. “I do remember for a while I was very angry about why things were happening.

“I mean, nobody ever wants to go through something like that, but my mom always told me you can take something bad and make it worse or you can turn it around and make better. So I kind of live by that.”

She is still at risk of losing her high-pitched hearing capability or of liver damage due to her chemotherapy treatments.

Taylor is the fourth women’s golfer to play for Miller in his 23 years as coach and the sole female on BC3’s spring roster.

The 72-hole national championship tournament begins Tuesday. Taylor has averaged a 112 over 18 holes in the fall 2024 and spring 2025 seasons.

“I’m extremely proud,” Angie said. “It has taken courage for her to get to this point. She always tells me, ‘I’m not the best golfer, mom, but I love playing. I love being able to do these things. What if I couldn’t have done them?”

“This is very special for me,” Joe said. “Everything that girl does amazes me. Her work ethic, her determination. I just want her to enjoy the ride. We are very proud of her whether she finishes in the top half or the bottom half.”

Taylor played frequently against Jada Ford, of Westmoreland County Community College, who will also compete in the national championship tournament.

“Everything she has gone through has made her the person she is and so confident in her abilities,” Ford said. “For us to be able to do this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

It is on a golf course where Taylor Voloch, who had two brain surgeries, a year of chemotherapy and had to teach herself to walk again, and to control her left side again, said she always feels peace.

“I tend to relax, lighten up,” she said. “I want to have fun at nationals. This is an experience that you don’t get often.

“Of course I want to do really well, but I think I just want to enjoy it and live in the moment.”

Bill Foley is coordinator of news and media content at Butler County Community College.