Scott Keyes
Sports Scene
Persistence makes you stronger.
If that’s the case, Bullock Creek’s Mary Juengel is much wiser than a majority of 14-year-old girls.
Juengel had to grow up a lot quicker than most because of a diagnosis in 2011 that left her family searching for answers and asking the always familiar question, “Why?”
Mary was stricken with Acute T-cell leukemia in October, 2011, and although treatable, it is extremely an aggressive cancer that left her facing almost two-and-a-half years of chemotherapy. Even while going through this ordeal, she has kept a positive outlook on life while becoming an inspiration to people and her surroundings.
Always smiling, Juengel doesn’t look like a young girl who has endured nearly 900 days of chemo, but the family’s strong faith and love of basketball has been a guiding force to help them through this painful ordeal.
Juengel’s long road to recovery is almost at an end, with her last major chemo treatment scheduled for February. When the Juengel family sat down with Sports Scene in early January, Mary had a scheduled chemo treatment the following Monday in Ann Arbor, a day before the Bullock Creek girls basketball team tangled with Hemlock. Both teams entered the game unbeaten on the season, while Hemlock was ranked No. 1 in Class B. The game was one of the biggest of the season thus far.
Mary’s older sister Elle is a junior point guard on the team, and Mary is her sister’s biggest fan.
“I don’t care if I was sick or what, I was making the Hemlock game,” Mary said. “If I had to run to the bathroom a few times to throw up, I was going to that game. I love to watch my sister play the game along with the rest of the girls. It’s like a big extended family.”
When the Bullock Creek girls basketball team made it to the Class B semifinals in last year’s MHSAA tounament, Mary was at the Breslin Center on the campus of Michigan State University cheering on the team on with the rest of the community.
“I wasn’t missing that game,” she said. ‘We were in the stands rooting them on. It was such a great game.” Bullock Creek would lose the game to Powers Catholic in overtime.
Of all her siblings, Elle was hit hardest by Mary’s diagnosis. Oldest sister Clara and brother Steven were both in college at the time, and Elle was home seeing the sickness and crying at the pain that her younger sibling was facing.
It was definitely hard on Elle, but the support from her Bullock Creek team and coach Justin Freeland has been tremendous.
“To see what Mary has gone through on a daily basis, but to watch her bounce back the way she has, only brings you closer together. It makes me so happy to hear Mary say that it is a highlight of her day when she says she won’t miss our game. I am so thankful for her being my No. 1. I’m just so grateful I still have her,” said Elle.
The Diagnosis
Mary started feeling sick in mid-October of 2011.
She had a fever and difficulty breathing — the family first thought it was a sinus infection, but antibiotics did nothing to relieve her symptoms. The family went to the emergency room Oct. 23, and within an hour doctors believed that she had lymphoma. Mary had a mass in her chest covering her heart and lungs. Physicians sent her to Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, where, within 24 hours, Mary was on three chemotherapy treatments and a steroid to work with the chemo.
After spending six days in the hospital, Mary returned home and continued weekly visits to Ann Arbor. In Nov. 2011, she had surgery to place a port in her chest, a bone marrow aspiration, a spinal tap, and intrathecal chemo at Mott.
Mary knew that she was going to lose her hair during treatments, but she didn’t want to wear a wig. “Why fake it,” Mary said. “This is me. I have cancer.”
It’s that attitude that has brought more people together because of her illness.
The one constant through it all has been the family’s love of basketball.
“Our family is really close,” said Mary’s mom Marni Juengel. “I think basketball is a constant. Mary knows what is going on during Elle’s games. She sometimes Facetimes her brother during the game. She knows how many points Elle has or her averages during the season. And if the refs make a bad call during the game, she will let them know about it.”
Mary’s father Mark agrees. “When you go through something like this, it really puts life into perspective,” said the longtime Midland Fastbreak AAU girls basketball coach. “When Mary got diagnosed, it changed our life instantly. From a basketball standpoint it kind of, in a way, brought us closer together for our family’s sake and for Elle. We couldn’t stop our lives totally. It kept some normalcy in our lives. To be able to coach basketball and the Fastbreak and really gain a tremendous amount of support from the basketball community because of it.”
Team Mary
Since Mary was diagnosed, her Team Mary Facebook page has grown to over 8,000 followers. Fastbreak also brought awareness to Mary’s fight with Team Mary shooting shirts that had coaches from all over the country inquring about the cause.
“People just connect with her,” Marni Juengel said of her daughter.
The support was tremendous after Mary’s diagnosis.
Mary’s team wears orange and pink bracelets and T-shirts— pink because it’s Mary’s favorite color and orange because it’s the color for leukemia. Mary’s basketball team named itself “Team Mary” and wore pink jerseys. Community members and schoolmates of Mary and Elle snapped up more than 2,000 bracelets, and the family cannot order T-shirts fast enough.
“When cancer hits, it certainly makes you look at life differently,” Marni said. “You don’t go to bed without realizing what a blessing today was. I think for all of us, this has really put a lot of things into perspective from this. Wins and losses are put into perspective now. Faith is what we ultimately come back to. To watch your child fight through this shows how precious life can be.”