Community Meetings

web1_TTl101215hitebdy.jpg

Happy birthday to Liam Hite!

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Ask Coughlin High School field hockey players who their toughest opponents are, and the girls mention Wyoming Valley West and Hazleton.</p><p>Then there was their worst opponent, the one that tried to steal their coach last year.</p><p>It wasn&#8217;t a team of competitive athletes but a disease. Breast cancer.</p><p>Colleen Wood, 46, who has been coaching the team since 1992, &#8220;felt a dent&#8221; in one of her breasts in August 2014. She had a mammogram, and the results showed she needed a biopsy.</p><p>She was referred to local breast surgeon Dr. Louis C. Blaum, and remembers thinking, &#8220;I can&#8217;t see Dr. Blaum; I have a scrimmage.&#8221;</p><p>Wood, who teaches life skills classes at Meyers High School in addition to coaching field hockey and lacrosse at Coughlin, lives by a simple motto: &#8220;You do what you have to do.&#8221;</p><p>So she did see the surgeon and she eventually had a double mastectomy followed by chemotherapy to treat what had been stage II cancer.</p><p>Through it all, she hardly ever missed a game.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m very superstitious,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I missed two games and both times a player got injured.&#8221;</p><p>On game days, Wood scheduled chemo treatments for the earliest possible appointment so she could rest for a while afterward yet still make it to the field.</p><p>&#8220;We were all shocked when it happened,&#8221; said Wood&#8217;s daughter Brigid, 17, who plays field hockey for Coughlin and will head to Boston College next year. &#8220;It definitely opened our eyes, that this could happen to any of us.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;We really wanted to play even harder, to do it for her.&#8221;</p><p>The coach kept showing up for the sake of the team but she did it for herself, too. She welcomed the distraction of work, Colleen Wood said.</p><p>&#8220;It helped to be busy,&#8221; she said.</p><p>It also helped that a cousin and a former player each gave her wrist bands designed to provide pressure to the wrist in an effort to reduce nausea. Web.md suggests such bands may help some people through a &#8220;placebo effect&#8221; and don&#8217;t help everyone &#8212; but Wood said they worked for her. The one day she forgot to wear them to her chemo treatment, she said, was the one day she experienced nausea and had to resort to anti-nausea pills.</p><p>In another show of support, last year the team&#8217;s booster club organized a &#8220;Pink Game,&#8221; complete with pink socks and raffles, that raised enough money to pay for a wig.</p><p>Needing a wig was the worst part of the ordeal, Wood said, because most of the ones she saw &#8220;weren&#8217;t me.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Where are the pony-tail wigs?&#8221; she said. &#8220;I wanted to know.&#8221;</p><p>When she wore a wig to Meyers, her life-skills students noticed. &#8220;Eww. You look different,&#8221; one boy said. One girl reached out to feel it and asked, &#8220;Wig?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; Wood told the student. Not wanting a lot of attention, she added, &#8220;Knock it off.&#8221;</p><p>Eager for the treatments to be over, Wood scheduled the last one a bit early, on New Year&#8217;s Eve instead of waiting until after the New Year&#8217;s holiday. &#8220;That way I got it over with in one year,&#8221; she said. &#8220;One bad year.&#8221;</p><p>This past summer Wood went to Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia for reconstructive surgery and earlier this month was cleared to drive. &#8220;I&#8217;m really excited about that,&#8221; she said.</p><p>Wood believes finding her cancer as early as she did saved her life.</p><p>If one good thing came out of the experience, Wood said, it&#8217;s that &#8220;Many of our (team) parents, maybe some of them who were putting off getting checked, said they&#8217;re going to do it.&#8221;</p><style>
.neFileBlock {
	margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
	margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
	border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
	padding-bottom: 5px;
	padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
	font-size: 85%;
}
</style>
<div class='neFileBlock'>
<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_colleenwood.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Breast cancer survivor and Coughlin High School field hockey coach Colleen Wood coached her team while undergoing chemotherapy treatment last year. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_colleenwood.jpg</photo0><caption0>Breast cancer survivor and Coughlin High School field hockey coach Colleen Wood coached her team while undergoing chemotherapy treatment last year. </caption0><photoCredit0>Pete G. Wilcox |Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL100715colleen-wood1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Coughlin High School field hockey players confer with their coach, Colleen Wood. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL100715colleen-wood1.jpg</photo1><caption1>Coughlin High School field hockey players confer with their coach, Colleen Wood. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Coughlin coach balances fighting for her life and fighting for a winning season</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p><strong>By Mary Therese Biebel</strong></p><p>mbiebel@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>PINK GAME</strong></p><p>The Oct. 13 field hockey game between Coughlin High School and Pittston High School, which starts at 4:15 p.m. at Coughlin&#8217;s field near the Dan Flood Elementary School, is another fund-raising &#8220;pink game.&#8221;</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mary Therese Biebel at 570-991-6109 or on Twitter @BiebelMT</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Coughlin coach Colleen Wood arranged treatment schedule so as not to miss field hockey games