When Catherine Engle reflects on her family’s journey to Team IMPACT, she thinks of being in the right place at the right time with the right people.
This journey began in 2019 when her then-five-year-old son Torin went to his school nurse with a weird feeling in his arm. The school nurse immediately called Catherine and took action, and this weird feeling ended up being a stroke—something very rare and unexpected in a child like Torin. Torin was airlifted to Saint Paul, where he spent four days in the PICU. A nurse later told Catherine that the day Torin was brought in, the lab tech set the MRI to run faster than usual, allowing Torin to see a pediatric neurologist faster than usual. Right place, right time, right people.
For months, Torin and his family were unsure what caused his stroke. All the tests were negative or inconclusive, and no one had any answers. Until five months later, when a pediatric rheumatologist had a hunch and ran a blood test that revealed their worst nightmare: cancer. Torin had B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
He immediately began an extensive treatment plan that included 26 months of chemotherapies and hundreds of pokes and prods. Catherine remembers one hospital visit that was particularly difficult. Because of his stroke history and one of his chemo medications, Torin needed to have twice-daily shots of a blood thinner. Her husband Steven was at the appointment with Torin when two nurses had to hold Torin down while a third nurse gave him his shots. Steven had to leave the room because he couldn’t stand seeing his son in that state. “Torin’s spirit was broken that day,” Catherine shared, “because that was the point that he learned he could say no as much as he wanted to, but it was going to happen anyway.”
Just months into treatment, Torin was hit with another unexpected curveball when the world shut down for COVID. Because Torin was in the thick of treatment, he was highly immunocompromised and vulnerable to illness. He and his three siblings were forced to go fully remote from their classmates and peers for more than 15 months, spending time with only each other. One of Torin’s medications affected his mood, making it hard for him to control his temper and causing frequent outbursts of frustration. This isolation paired with Torin’s ongoing battle impacted his family and strained his relationships with his siblings. They’d watch other kids in their neighborhood play outside together, knowing they couldn’t participate because they had a brother who was sick. “Between treatment and COVID, the light in Torin’s eyes went out for a while,” Catherine said.
While his peers were navigating hybrid learning and COVID restrictions at school, Torin was navigating Zoom reading groups in the hallway at the hospital. He missed out on a lot of the activities, sports, and clubs his siblings and peers participated in when they were his age. In the fall of 2021, the Engle children were finally able to return to in-person school. They still couldn’t participate in their typical extracurricular activities, but the time with their peers added a little bit of the pre-COVID normalcy back to their days. Torin was excited to be back in the classroom, but he was also aware of the new friend groups and relationships that formed in his absence. Torin was no longer on active chemo treatments, but he still felt isolated from his friends and classmates who were able to join clubs, play sports, and connect through extracurriculars while he was learning from home.
At just the right time that same fall, Torin joined the St. Olaf basketball team through Team IMPACT. St. Olaf’s campus had long been the Engle family’s right place. It was where Catherine and Steven met years earlier as Oles students themselves. But now, their kids found a home on campus too. The team quickly became Torin’s new normal. His teammates were the only people he got to see outside of his family and his classmates, something he and his siblings needed more than they realized. “That’s the ‘why’ for the team’s importance in Torin’s life,” Catherine said. “He had a place of belonging, where he knew he could put some of his identity while he navigated his way into finding what else brought him joy. The full-on welcome from the team allowed him to not feel like he was constantly searching for his footing with them, which then enabled him to relax into trusting who he is and what lights him up.” In addition to their right place, they had found their right people too.
The first day with the team, Torin and his siblings ran around the basketball court, laughing and joking with their new teammates. When Catherine looks back on photos from that first visit, she remembers just how far her son has come. “I don’t know if I could tell you the last time we had seen Torin smile like he is in that picture,” she said. “Even for our other kids, they all just got to be kids. They hadn’t gotten the chance to just be kids in a really long time and not be the kid who has cancer or the kid whose brother has cancer.”
Through big treatments, big wins, big challenges, and big life moments, the Oles and Torin powered forward together. One of the chemotherapies used in the treatment of ALL causes neuropathy and foot drop, and Torin was severely impacted by this side effect. He wore leg braces for years and had to do frequent physical therapy sessions. His teammates helped him stay motivated, communicating with him on the Marco Polo app when they couldn’t be together in person and sending him photos and videos of the team practicing his PT exercises, challenging the always competitive Torin to do them just a little bit better. Torin even noticed some of his St. Olaf teammates wearing similar leg and ankle braces to his while they played. “It made it easier for him to look down on the court and see his team wearing braces too,” Catherine said.
Slowly the Engles watched their son become himself again. Before his diagnosis, Torin was mischievous, climbing on furniture in the house and getting a kick out of doing things he knew his parents probably didn’t want him to do. “This team brought his light back,” Catherine said. “They brought back his goofiness, his sense of humor, his mischief. They have helped him walk more lightly through the world.”
The team played with Torin “in the way you would play with a little brother,” Catherine said. From afar, Catherine watched the players interact with her son. “The team treating him like he’s not breakable when everybody else was so cautious with him let him figure out who he is again. It gave him the confidence to know that his presence was going to be welcomed and not be questioned,” she recalled. “The way Addi, from day one, has always ruffled Torin’s hair every time he passes him. The expanding of team huddles to make sure there’s a place for him. The widening of timeout circles to make sure he’s not behind their backs. Teammates subbing out and going all the way down to the end of the bench when they come off the floor to include him in their high fives. The players knowing his favorite flavor of Quench gum and bringing him a piece from the trainer’s table when they get up to get their own. It’s all the small actions that show Torin that he matters to them and he’s a part of their community. They have taught him what it is to feel a part of a team.”
Through countless games and practices, Torin supports his team. Each home game, Torin buys two bags of Skittles—one for him and one to share with his teammates on the bench. For an away game on Valentines Day, Torin wrote notes to each player on a bag of Skittles so they could continue their game day traditions, even while apart. With Torin on their roster, the Oles have won dozens of games and made huge runs in postseason play. Just last month, Torin was honored on court with his Oles at Senior Day.
When he first met the team, Torin struggled to make eye contact. He hid behind his mom and deferred to her to be his voice when his teammates asked him questions. When Torin arrives on campus now, he immediately leaves his mom’s side to run onto the court with his guys. “I just love that he feels comfortable enough to know that that is where he belongs,” Catherine said. “He doesn’t always, but he much more often now, carries himself with confidence and believes he should be in the places he is. He sees himself as an athlete.”
Torin tried to hide his smiles and laughs from the team at first, but now he just lets them shine through. Now, Torin instigates the silliness with his team. “He’s so comfortable with them, and that’s carried over into other areas of his life,” Catherine said. Torin is a proud member of his swim team, participates in concerts, and is active in his community youth theatre, where he recently became their youngest set tech.
Through basketball and his other new interests, the Oles support Torin. Earlier this year on the bus to an away game, the team streamed Torin’s swim meet, cheering him on even when they knew he couldn’t hear them. “I love that not only is he a part of their team and cheers and supports them from the bench, but that they are also actively proud of the things he does,” Catherine said. “They’re the first ones he wants to make sure know about concerts and plays and swim meets.”
Torin’s time with the team quickly became his favorite time. “St. Olaf basketball always just saw him as Torin. Especially to peers, for a long time he was the kid with cancer. He’s never been shy about talking about it, but that means that was also how everyone knew him,” Catherine said. “The team knows that about him and knew that about him when we met, but he was always Torin first. They were the first place in a really long time where he got to be Torin and just Torin without the ‘comma Cancer Kid.’ And that has gone a long way in helping him navigate figuring out who he is.”
Earlier this school year, four years to the day the Engles received the news of Torin’s cancer diagnosis, things were looking a bit better and brighter than four years earlier. “Torin started the day racing in the pool with his St. Olaf teammates in the stands, and he spent the afternoon on campus with them at practice,” Catherine recalled. “Looking back, who would have thought that this is where he would be now? That these are the people who would be important in our lives?” Right place, right time, right people.
“There are so many organizations that exist to financially help families that are going through medical crises with their kids, but Team IMPACT is one of, if not the only that actually supports and addresses the social and emotional impacts of being sick as a kid,” Catherine said. “Particularly for our kid and for our family who had to do cancer plus COVID at the same time, it was really needed. I don’t know who Torin would be without Team IMPACT, and as a result, I don’t know what our family dynamic would be without Team IMPACT. Because Torin has healed, the rest of our family has been able to heal, because we haven’t been in crisis mode anymore. And because Torin has healed, his relationships with his siblings are slowly healing. They feel free to be who they are in the world because they don’t have to turn who they are toward their hurting sibling.”
Catherine struggles to think about where her son and her family would be now if they didn’t have the Oles. “They’ve given him a purpose. At times when he was trying to figure out who he was after treatment ended and he was no longer ‘the kid with cancer,’ he was always ‘a member of the St. Olaf basketball team.’”
Like many of the kids in our program, Torin describes his time with the Oles as “life changing.” His mom, however, describes it as “life giving.” “Team IMPACT will be the best experience,” she said. “It will change not only your child but you as well. I don’t think the players all realize that they feel like my kids too. I just want to give them all the biggest hugs and say thank you.”
All because the Engles and the Oles were in the right place at the right time with the right people.
