Why Moniteau football’s hydration specialist, Kadyn Czepiel, is ‘the bravest person I know’
Kadyn Czepiel takes his role as Moniteau football’s hydration specialist seriously.
“They have Gatorade sometimes for things — it's not bad, but I yell at them when they drink it all and not the water, because you need water with Gatorade if you are playing,” Czepiel said before a practice last week.
See?
He’s there on Friday nights, at every practice and helps other teams in the Moniteau program. He’s been with the Warriors for four years, and started by helping the youth program before that.
Czepiel, a junior at Moniteau High School, is not the typical teen volunteer water boy.
He is a brain cancer survivor who can’t play football or most contact sports. He was first diagnosed at 3 years old with pilomyxoid astrocytoma, which formed a tumor around his right optic nerve and has permanently blinded him in that eye.
The cancer has returned twice more and required multiple surgeries and chemotherapy treatments each time, the last time occurring five years ago. They’re monitoring the tumor constantly.
In hindsight, his mother, Veronica, knows there were symptoms and signs for months. But when Kadyn developed terrible headaches that caused vomiting right after her husband, Thomas, returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, she rushed him to a hospital.
A CT scan led to a sudden flight to a hospital in Washington — the family lived in Alaska at the time — and the dreadful diagnosis.
“Now we've been lucky for the last five years — knock on wood — that it hasn't grown,” Veronica said. “Now we are watching it because another cyst popped up near it, which happens with this type of tumor, and depending what the cyst does, and he has a mutation in his tumor that can cause it to grow at any time.”
Despite the life-threatening and life-altering disease, Kadyn is unusually upbeat. He has his bad days, and when the cancer has returned those bad days are more common, but he is bubbly, talkative and eager to do almost anything.
He has participated in sports at a Penn State-Behrend camp for visually impaired children each summer for years and is in Moniteau’s ensemble, which he sings in. His favorite activity is tandem kayaking.
“I just look at everything positively,” Kadyn said. “I do (have) my negative days, but everybody does when you have something like this. I have time for my anxiety comes for what reason. … I make friends and just look at everything positively, positive people help people.”
He also had the chance to score a touchdown on a special play with Moniteau’s midget program a few years ago, his only experience playing football.
“That was fun,” Kadyn said. “I enjoyed that. I had a vision teacher as well, because I get vision services, and my vision teacher even came to watch.”
How did someone like Kadyn become an integral part of the Warriors, who are 2-2 under first-year head coach Clay Kohlmeyer after losing 18 straight games over the previous two seasons?
Kadyn’s twin brother, Landon, has played football for several years and is a defensive back for the Warriors this year. Youth football coach Matt Campbell asked Kadyn to participate with the midget program as their water boy.
Kadyn admits he’s not a huge football fan, but he likes to help and enjoys being around his brother.
Landon comes off as the exact opposite of his twin, quiet and reserved to Kadyn’s talkative, outgoing persona. Their mother said they have their own language, and the two are nearly inseparable, Landon always willing to stand up for his brother whenever needed.
“We just have a really strong bond, a lot stronger than people think,” Landon said.
Landon and Kadyn have an older brother, Gavin, who is in college.
But mostly, Kadyn just likes being involved with the football team, even when tensions flare in the heat of a summer practice or in the middle of the game. and Kohlmeyer enjoys having him around.
He is also a source of inspiration for those around him. Veronica said she “shut down” for about a year after he was first diagnosed with cancer. No parent wants to hear the C-word about their child. But the family rallied around “the bravest person I know,” she said, seeing how he’s handled years of scans, chemo, surgeries and other setbacks.
“He is my hero because I know as an adult, I couldn't, I probably wouldn't be able to do all that he's been through,” she said.
Jake Merda Adams is the sports editor at the Butler Eagle.
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