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Biggest battle comes off the gridiron for Mead assistant football coach

Every week, we show you the top games across the state, the best match-ups and the biggest battles. But sometimes, those fights come off the field and into every day life.

MEAD — Every week, we show you the top games across the state, the best match-ups and the biggest battles. But sometimes, those fights come off the field and into every day life.

Mead High School assistant football coach Tyler Swanson knows what it's like to compete. Swanson helped the Mavericks post a 9-4 record in 2016. After a tough off-season, Mead entered the fall of 2017 as the top ranked team in the 3A classification. But while the season, itself, would be a challenge, nothing compared to the fight Swanson had ahead.

"I'm a teacher, coach [and] dad to a year-and-a-half and newborn," Swanson said. "I had a pretty full plate, and chalked it up to just being exhausted. My wife and family saw it as more than that."

Something wasn't right. Swanson was getting forgetful, and began falling asleep in random places. It wasn't until he fell asleep in front of his class at Trail Ridge Middle School that he realized maybe it was more than just pure exhaustion.

"The very next day, my wife said we have to take you in, so we did," he said. "They found out I had a non-germinous cell tumor about the size of a golf ball right in the middle of my brain. That was causing the optic phoria and giving me fatigue and exhaustion."

More tests were done before the family got the news. Tyler was diagnosed with cancer on March 7, 2017. But it wasn't your typical disease. His cancer was one found more predominantly in children, so he was sent to Children's Hospital to be treated.

The cancer treatment had to be aggressive, doctors said, because there was a very high cure rate.

"This is really, quite uncommon in someone Tyler's age," director of pediatric radiation oncology Dr. Arthur Liu said. "Childhood cancers are rare to begin with, but young adults who get this kind of tumor are really quite uncommon."

Tyler's wife, Hannah, would keep family members and well-wishers up to date on his condition with Facebook posts. She was also tasked with making his medical decisions.

"Our journey will be long and won't be easy, but with the odds in our favor, Tyler will conquer this hurdle," she wrote. "Please walk along beside us in prayer as we get through this bump in the road."

What followed from those doctors visits was six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by six rounds of radiation.

"You get scared at first, the 'what ifs' set in, and you think about all of your loved ones. You think about everything you've done," Tyler said. "That's sorta the dust. Once the dust settles around you, you really have to pick yourself back up and say, 'I'm going to get better through this.'"

In addition to the chemo treatments, part of Tyler's healing process came from resuming as much of a normal life as possible. That meant returning to the weight room and gridiron with the Mavs.

"You have to keep as normal of a routine as you can, and that was coaching for me," Tyler said. "I couldn't teach in the classroom, but I could coach. There were days where I had to wear a mask in the weight room. There were days where I was down and couldn't think, but everyone knew I was giving it my all."

During his chemotherapy treatments, Tyler had a moment of clarity.

"There was one morning when I woke up and I said, 'God, if you take this tumor away, I will shout Your name from the mountaintops, but if You don't, I will still shout Your name,'" he said. "Coming to peace with that was a major turning pint in my cancer journey."

After two months in the ring against chemotherapy, Tyler proudly threw the last jab. The six rounds of chemo were very effective in shrinking the tumor in Tyler's brain. What was once the size of a golf ball, was now the size of two marbles. Next came the radiation.

"I thought I knew what radiation was, but to this day, I still don't know what radiation is," Tyler said with a laugh. "They bolt me down to a table, the table moves and I hear a few noises and that's it. They come in and say, 'you're done.'"

The Swansons returned to a normal routine once the six rounds of radiation were complete. During that time, Tyler credited his family and football team for helping him heal.

"The main thing that go me through were my wife and two girls, but keeping the norm with coaching was important," he said. "Getting out on the field with the players and coaches made everything normal. It made me forget that I had to go to radiation or get chemo. I was able to zone out all of the cancer junk and focus on coaching and making the players better, which is what I love to do."

On October 12, 2017, Tyler received the news -- he was cancer free. That night before the Mead Maverick's football game against Frederick, Mead football head coach Joel Klatt and Tyler delivered the news to the team.

"Everyone was in a circle, and I got to go in the middle and I had the pictures of the before and after, and showed it to them. It was great," Tyler said.

The Mavericks went on to defeat Frederick 36-17 that night, and would win their next three games, capping off a perfect, undefeated regular season.

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