A Family Fight

Courage & Strength. Faith & Fight.

Those are the four words, along with the initials DR, emblazoned on a patch worn on the sleeve of the OU women's gymnastics team's warmup tops in 2017. In the middle is a blue ribbon to represent colon cancer.

The initials stand for Dave Richardson, the husband of the team athletic trainer, Jenn. Dave was diagnosed with cancer in June 2016 and the team immediately rallied around the man they refer to as their “Norman dad.”

To the team and coaches, Jenn and Dave aren't just the athletic trainer and her husband.

They're family.

JUNE 10, 2016

June 10, 2016 is the day that won't ever be forgotten by Dave and Jenn. What seemed like a normal day ended up being anything but that.

Working late, Dave arrived home in the early hours of the morning and headed straight to bed. Just a couple hours later, he woke up with intense pain in his abdomen. Thinking it might just be food poisoning from a stop at a fast food restaurant late in the night, he sent Jenn to work and spent the day trying to sleep off the pain.

But the pain wouldn't subside. Jenn came home from work where she found him lying in their closet, his pain at a 15 on a scale of 1-10. That's when she knew it was more than just food poisoning or a stomach bug.

Her next thought? Appendicitis.

Dave drove himself to the emergency room, so Jenn could stay home with their one-year-old daughter, Joie.

“He went up to the emergency room and once Joie woke up around 3:30-4, I still hadn't heard from him,” Jenn recalls. “I was texting him, calling him and he still wasn't answering, so I really didn't know what was going on. As soon as Joie woke up, we went up to the ER and at that point they were just then getting ready to take him back for a CT scan because they thought it was his appendix.”

After the CT scan, the doctors came out to tell Jenn they were situating Dave in a room to prep him for surgery to remove his appendix. The couple was scheduled to fly to New Jersey later in the weekend, so Jenn began calling family members to tell them the plans were changing because of Dave's diagnosis.

Moments later, the doctors would come back in with a new diagnosis that neither Jenn or Dave ever expected.

“About ten minutes later, the doctor came in and she just said, 'Well, we did your CT scan and there seems to be a mass in your colon and it's cancer.' Point blank,” Jenn says. “We were both like, 'Wait a minute, time out, we want that appendix. Can we have the appendix diagnosis instead?' That was it. That was the game changer at that point in time.”

Dave shares, “I didn't believe her at first. Honestly, I thought I was going to die. When someone tells you that and you're not prepared for it – and then I just started thinking about Jenn and Joie. I have three older children who live in New Jersey and I thought about them, my mom and dad. You hear people say life flashes before your eyes, well my life – my future – our future flashed before my eyes. It was very emotional, it was very hard to take. To hear that you have cancer, it's like 'whoa'.”

Jenn, who was in her 11th season as the athletic trainer for the women's gymnastics team made two calls after receiving the news. The first, to her mother. The second to the head coach of the team, K.J. Kindler.

“It was very shocking,” Kindler says. “We were aware that he was having some stomach pains. Our minds didn't even go there because we were focused on appendicitis. And Jenn being a health care professional she was focused on that, so we believed her 200 percent. We were thinking, 'He is going into the hospital. We are going to find out it is appendicitis and he will be down for a week'. When she called with the news of what they thought it was, we were completely shocked and not ready for that information.”

With everything happening on a Friday afternoon, Kindler would wait to tell the team until Monday morning. A few of the girls reached out to let Jenn know they were thinking about her and Dave.

"Honestly, I thought I was going to die. When someone tells you that and you're not prepared for it – and then I just started thinking about Jenn and Joie. I have three older children who live in New Jersey and I thought about them, my mom and dad. You hear people say life flashes before your eyes, well my life – my future – our future flashed before my eyes. "
- Dave Richardson

“The team, they love Jenn,” assistant coach Tom Haley says. “She is their mother away from home. She takes great care of them. They genuinely love her. I think that is was very difficult for them as well to think that she would have to go through this, someone so undeserving would have to deal with something like this.”

Sophomore Bre Showers shares, “It was heartbreaking. “They're such great people and you never want something like that to happen to people that you love and that you're close to. It broke my heart and it's sad. It's a battle and I hate having to watch it all play out. They're incredibly strong people.”

Dave began chemotherapy shortly after his diagnosis, receiving treatments every other week for six months. Jenn would drive him to treatment, get him settled and then head off to the gym for practice. When treatments were done, she would leave practice, get Dave settled at home and once again head to the gym to wrap up.

“I take care of people for a living, so I really had to try to find a balance between that professional side of things as far as taking care of him but also being supportive as his wife,” Jenn says. “You do what you have to do. I made sure I was available for him anytime he needed me, constantly checking on him.”

Jenn never skipped a beat as she balanced being a wife, a mother and an athletic trainer for those six months. Though she admits that the fall was a blur, she never let it affect her work in the gym.

“She is always on top of things,” senior Sam Craus says. “There are days where it will get to her more but she rarely shows it. She never skips a beat. And if she misses practice to go to an appointment with him, she always has it covered and lets us know. So how she holds it together, I don't know.”

A FAMILY AWAY FROM HOME

For the last 12 years, Jenn has been a staple of the OU women's gymnastics team. She arrived in Norman from Athens, Ga., where she was the athletic trainer for the Georgia gymnastics team that was coming off its second straight national championship.

The first time she ever spoke with Kindler was on the phone in the summer of 2006. Jenn had already been offered the job and was just hoping to mesh with her potential new head coach. Kindler spent the phone call recruiting her and after that phone call, Jenn accepted the job.

Haley, who Kindler hired from Kentucky in 2006, has known Jenn the longest of anyone on staff. The pair first met almost 20 years ago while both working at the University of Alabama. Jenn was beginning her athletic training career and Haley was coaching club gymnastics.

“They are great friends with our family,” Haley says. “Our kids hang out together. During a lot of this Joie came to our house when Jenn had to work, and Dave may have been down or working himself, we watched Joie. They are at our house. We are at their house. We are watching football; we are doing plenty of things together. Jenn is more than a co-worker. They are more than friends. They are our family.”

Jenn and Dave are almost like second parents to the girls on the team. Showers and Craus have both had surgeries in the last year and have leaned on Jenn more than ever as they have gone through rehab.

“There is no way I would be where I was without them,” Craus shares. “They are always there. Like I said, they are like a second set of parents here and Dave is in the gym always asking how we are doing. motivating us, cheering us along. Jenn, she has been my rock. I actually just tore my ACL and just had surgery and so I have gotten closer to her. I could not do it without them.”

The team refers to Dave as their “Norman dad,” a moniker he will introduce himself with to new members of the team. He's as protective of the gymnasts as he his own daughter, meeting Craus' boyfriend earlier this year and warning him of how he would be looking out for her.

“He's very fun loving and carefree,” Craus shares. “He will bring in Joie, their daughter, and play around with her. He always gives us high-fives and asks us how we are doing. When I came in the gym freshman year he would visit and say, 'I am your Norman dad. I will look out for you and be protective over you.' And stuff like that.”

Showers shares, “I met Dave on my official visit here, so the year before I came here to go to school. He was at the tailgate with all our parents. He was the life of the party. He was funny and was always trying to get us to crack a smile or pick a joke or just pick fun at you. He's always there to lighten the mood.”

THE PATCH

It was the team's love for Dave that led Kindler to want to design the patch that would be worn on their warmups that season. Though the team was supporting Dave and Jenn in other ways, Kindler wanted a way to support Dave outwardly. The coaching staff wanted words that would resonate with the situation which is how they came up with courage, strength, faith and fight. With the help of OU graphic designer Scott Matthews, the thoughts and ideas came to fruition.

“When we presented them with that patch, I kind of wrapped it up in a Christmas gift that he opened,” Kindler says. “I had no idea that it would have the impact that it did on him. We were doing it from our hearts. We were wanting him to know that we were behind him 100 percent. Sometimes you underestimate what that means to other people and, so I feel like he really felt that all year long. We made sure that he was present with us at all times.”

Later in the evening after seeing the patch, Dave went outside to get something from the car and found himself just standing outside Kindler's house. It was in that moment when he realized just how much the entire team cared about him and how much he had impacted their lives.

"I had no idea that it would have the impact that it did on him. We were doing it from our hearts. We were wanting him to know that we were behind him 100 percent. Sometimes you underestimate what that means to other people and, so I feel like he really felt that all year long. We made sure that he was present with us at all times."
- K.J. Kindler

“It was very emotional,” he shares. “I didn't want them to do it. This team, this program, being the first dad of the team, I want those girls to concentrate on their season and achieve their goals and I didn't want to be a distraction. I know from being around the gym and hanging with Jenn and being around the girls – I know what goes into this program. I didn't want it to be a distraction. I was very proud, very happy.”

Wearing the patch was anything but a distraction to the girls who wanted nothing more than to show their support for a member of their gymnastics family.

“We want to honor him, and we want to do everything we can to help him with his battle and everything that he's going through because it is hard,” Showers says. “Being able to wear the patch, it means a lot. He's our Norman dad. Jenn and her family are the glue that keeps our team together. It means a lot to have that patch on our sleeve.”

When the team won the 2017 National Championship, Dave and Joie were in the stands cheering the Sooners to victory. After the meet, Joie wanted to see 'Mama' so the pair made their way to the competition floor.

Standing off to the side, then-seniors Kara Lovan and Charity Jones turned to Dave and said, “That one's for you.”

“I kind of stood there and was like 'wow' this is not for me, this is yours,” Dave shares. “I didn't do any flips, I didn't do any tumbles, handstands, I didn't do any of it. But the fact that they said that during their celebration, it meant a whole lot. For me to feel like I can't get through chemo or beat cancer, they're examples of why I fight every day. To beat this.”

Following his final chemo treatment in December 2016, Dave underwent five weeks of radiation to try and shrink a larger tumor in his left lung. Surgery in June 2016 and the chemo had killed off smaller tumors that had metastasized in his lungs, with just the large one left to handle.

In June, the doctor informed him that the small tumors that were not detected after chemo were back. Though small, they were back and growing in size, but Dave's doctor didn't want to start another round of chemo right away, giving his body the chance to recover from the first set of treatments. In October 2017, the tumors had intensified enough, and Dave would begin chemo for the second time on December 4, 2017.

“It's more emotional and more mental this time,” Dave shares. “It's definitely different. It's the same process but a lot more intense.”

At the first meet of the 2018 season, with Dave in attendance, the Sooners took to the floor at Georgia with the patch once again placed on the sleeves of their warmup jackets.

As long as Dave continues to fight, the team will be there, fighting right alongside him.