Prince’s biggest win: victory over Hodgkins

As with most freshmen, Brianne Prince suffered from a severe case of nervous knots during her first collegiate game.

A standout during her five-year varsity softball career at Frewsburg Central School, she looked anything but like the two-time Western New York Pitcher of the Year when she started her first game at St. Bonaventure last August.

“I knew that it would be different being three feet farther back, but I was like, aw it won’t be that bad,” Prince said of the greater distance between the mound and home plate from high school to college softball. “And I got out there and pitched and got killed. I got so discouraged. I’m like there’s no way…I thought I made a bad impression on (Bona coach Mike Threehouse) because that was the first time he’s ever seen me play. In high school he never came out to see my games so I’m like, great. He probably thinks I’m horrible.”

But Threehouse, a part-time coach who doesn’t get to view many recruits, thought the opposite.

He was convinced she’d be great after that first performance against Niagara.

“She came to me in the fourth inning and looked at me and said, ‘Coach, this is a lot different than high school. I have to get better.’” Threehouse recalled. “And I looked at her, and said, ‘You are going to be good.’ Because I’m gonna tell you…a lot of freshmen don’t understand that until the end of their freshman year. She realized it in her first game that she had to get better…it was a different kind of softball…I looked at her and said you’re going to be a great pitcher because of that attitude.”

She showed glimpses of her potential the rest of the fall season, going 3-0 after that first fateful outing, challenging for a top spot in the Bona rotation..

The development has stopped for now. But the attitude has grown and matured in ways that surpass most 40-year olds, let alone 19-year olds.

After months of back and shoulder problems, Prince was diagnosed in March with Hodgkin’s Disease.

Her shoulder-length hair has been reduced to stubble after just a few chemotherapy treatments. She’s lost some weight, too.

And though at times, when talking about the barrage of toxins pumped into her body to fight the cancer of the lymph nodes, she stares blankly at a loose thread of the fisherman’s hat gently placed in her lap, Prince remains the charismatic young woman who easily draws people into her circle of gravity.

“If anyone had to get this, she’s the best person to deal with it,” senior captain Jen Bovee said. “She’s so positive and upbeat. I know she handles it 100 percent better than I would. She has my envy for that.”

The difficult diagnosis

As with most Hodgkin’s patients, detection was slow and difficult. The cause of the cancer, which affects lymphatic tissue, remains unknown and since lymph nodes swell for a variety of normal reasons, such as fighting a cold, there aren’t many classic, tell-tale signs.

For Prince, the problems started in October, when the back of her neck began to hurt. The physical education major assumed she pulled something in the gymnastics class but as the pain got worse, she told members of the Bona athletic staff.

Prince went through the normal battery of tests and suspended her indoor pitching workouts.

“We still thought maybe it was just a herniated disc or an impingement in her shoulder that most pitchers get at some point,” Threehouse said.”…we just went on the assumption that if we treat her for a bad back, that everything was going to be OK. And obviously, it never went away.”

Prince continued to see doctors and specialists over the next few months to treat her neck and upper back.

The in February, she went for physical therapy in Olean.

“That was the day when the (physical therapist) saw a big lump on my neck,” Prince said. “I didn’t even notice it that morning…then I went down to show the trainers and they said they’d never seen anything like that before…

“I didn’t even think about it. I wasn’t upset. I was showing everybody, laughing about it because it was huge. It was like this huge golf ball in my neck. We were just joking around about it.”

There was no real pain with the swelling, so doctors scheduled her for a complete tomography (CT) scan later in the week. But a few days after the lump appeared, Prince began having difficulty breathing sending her immediately to Olean General Hospital. Several tests, doctors and hours later, she learned her neck problems were the result of a swollen lymph node caused by nodular sclerosis Hodgkin’s Disease.

“At first I was like, what? ...then when I went down to register (as an inpatient) I was sitting there and it hit me,” Prince said. “I cried like for a second. I really didn’t know much about it. That’s why

I cried. But then they told me after that it was curable.”

She cried once more, later that night when she called her roommate, fellow freshman catcher Justalene Olson.

“The first night she was in the hospital she called me in the middle of the night,” Olson remembers. “She said it all hit me that this is kind of scary. But after that night I never saw her upset about it…it’s hard on me and her close friends, but when we see how she is, we couldn’t let down.”

Despite her positive attitude, Prince’s supporting cast needed time to find their source of strength.

“To be honest, I had to find my mother to talk to, and we sat and talked a bit,” Threehouse said. “It was tough. But Brianne made it a lot easier with her attitude. It was, ‘Coach, I’m going to be fine. Just help me get my hardship waiver so I can come back and play a fifth year for you because I love it here.’ She made it a lot easier on all of us.”

Even though people talk of her fabulous attitude on and off the field, her reaction to cancer was surprising even to those who knew Prince best.

“She could have gone into this depression and said it is the end of my career,” said Frewsburg softball coach Jon Blanchard, who coached Prince to four Section 6 titles. “She’s positive and sees the positive side of things, but something of this magnitude, you wonder what it takes for a breaking point, especially for a young girl.”

I’ll be fine

But if Prince has a breaking point, Hodgkin’s isn’t it.

Animated and lively, she guides a hand over the small, metal shunt protruding from her upper right chest. That’s where the chemotherapy drugs enter her body, every other Monday until August.

The biweekly trip home for treatments in Jamestown keep her out of classes for several days at a time.

“Now, even talking about it, my stomach is so upset. I’m nauseous right now thinking about it,” Prince said rubbing her stomach.

Only her digestive system becomes upset about the disease. Prince herself only gets slightly worked up when other people make a big deal out of her cancer.

“Everybody is a lot more upset that I was,” she said. “They were all bawling and I’m like, it’s OK. I’ll be fine. They just feel sorry for me. They hug me gentle, like I’m going to break…when other people get upset it makes me upset.”

Prince remains in class until the spring semester closes in three weeks. When she began treatment, there were just two months left in the academic year, so she elected to grind out the final weeks instead of starting from scratch in the fall.

After chemotherapy she’ll undergo radiation. By her calculations, that leaves her plenty of time to be ready for next spring’s softball season.

If a regret lingers amid the Prince positive charm, it’s that she must sit in the dugout while her teammates struggle through a 10-31 season.

“I feel bad. I feel like I could help them,” Prince said. “This spring’s been pretty rough and stuff…

I just want to go in there.”

While the Bonnies miss her on the mound, they know her battle is more important than any Atlantic 10 competition.

“The one thing she’s shown me as a coach is no matter how hard it gets in the softball field, I’ve got a young lady I know fighting for her life,” Threehouse said. “and that’s the priority. It’s not softball. She’s helped me and she’s helped a lot of her teammates put a lot of things into perspective.”

Actually, Hodgkin’s has helped even Prince put the pieces in order.

“Softball was my life…now I Know how many people really care about me,” Prince said,

She’s flabbergasted by the attention. By the cards and flowers from softball teams around Chautauqua County. By the cards and hugs from strangers,

By her boyfriend and best friend shaving their heads so she wouldn’t have to endure baldness alone.

Most importantly, she’s awed by her family.

My brother (Bill) wrestles and he was the state champion at 171,” Prince said as her rate of speech grew faster. “After he won, he dedicated the season to me and that meant a lot to me. That’s his way of showing how much he cares.”

Those are the things the fuel the moxie in Prince’s eyes.