Mike Crist knew something wasn’t right. He was losing weight and his face was sunken in – symptoms he knew all too well. What he didn’t know was that this wasn’t the same diagnosis he had received and fought off twice before. After being in remission from Hodgkins Lymphoma for around 15 years, Crist described the news as “a blow.”

Crist, a Shawnee resident, was given his third cancer diagnosis in January of 2016 – an aggressive and incurable form of lung cancer that occurred almost exclusively in heavy smokers.

“I’ve never smoked,” Crist said. “So it was just like, really?”

The Game

Crist first started playing volleyball in his 20s for a club team. This was where he first met his long-time friend Andy Oaks, the associate club director for Dynasty Volleyball. Crist fell in love with the sport and enrolled his daughter, Cassidy, who is now a sophomore at De Soto High School, in a club as soon as she was old enough to play.

“We actually started at a different club because I was worried it was going to be too competitive … but I just couldn’t handle how they did things,” Mike said.

After a year at their first club, Mike got back in contact with Oaks.

“I wanted to be a coach, and he said my daughter could come play for Dynasty,” Mike said. “I love the way they train, the family feel they have there, I love how competitive they were as a club. It was just like a perfect fit for me to get back into coaching … since she was playing and I was coaching her team most of the time, it was just perfect.”

For four years, Mike and Cassidy’s team climbed its way up the volleyball food-chain, becoming one of the most successful level-2 teams Dynasty had known up to that point. Ranked around 40th in the nation and third in the Heart of America region at one point, the team’s skill level was nearly unheard of to anyone outside of the top level of teams.

“For a 2s team, we were impressed with how successful we were … Since then, Dynasty has grown so much, all of their 2s teams and 3s teams have started qualifying for Nationals, and it’s like, man, all that stuff I was doing, everybody’s doing now,” Mike said. “In a way, I wonder if that’s what [club director] Bryon [Larson] and Andy feel about me, that I came in and kind of proved that you don’t have to be on a 1s team to be really good and to be competitive for the kids that want that. I mean, not everyone can make a 1s team. There’s only so many clubs.”

Larson admitted that that was exactly how they viewed Mike – “a winner … a great coach and a role model” for the athletes at Dynasty.

For Mike, the most important aspect of Dynasty was the close-knit family feel. Though Mike admitted that it is hard for a team not to become close after spending three nights a week together for practice and travel 10 weekends out of the year for tournaments, the connection he and Cassidy made with their teammates was unlike any other.

“The competition was fun and the results were great, but now that I look back and I’m not doing it anymore, what I really cherish is the relationship I had with the kids and the parents,” Mike said.

The Diagnosis

In his 20s, Mike was diagnosed with a type of lymphoma cancer called Hodgkins disease. After going through chemotherapy and radiation, Mike was in remission for nearly 10 years before being diagnosed with the exact same disease again, treated with more chemo and radiation.

Mike began seeing warning signs again, 15 years after going into remission from his second round of Hodgkins.

“My wife [Lynn Crist] and I kind of had an idea,” Mike said. “I knew a lot of the symptoms; I had been losing quite a bit of weight, my face was sunken in a lot more, so my wife and I were a bit worried that something was going on, and when we got the news that it was that type of cancer, and it’s like one of the most aggressive, incurable, and I never smoked, so it was just like, really?”

Mike was diagnosed in January of 2016 with small cell lung cancer, a cancer known almost exclusively to those exposed to smoke from tobacco products. However, other risk factors for this disease include exposure to radiation, including for therapy, to the chest area – which Mike had undergone for Hodgkins twice before.

“I was kind of shocked,” Cassidy recalled of when she found out about the diagnosis. “My mom already knew, so she had sunglasses on trying to hide that she was crying, and my sisters were both crying. I think we were all just kind of shocked, and right when he said he had it, everyone just kind of seemed to tune the rest out.”

Small cell lung cancer is not treatable through surgery; it can only be treated through the blood, as it spreads by blood, tissue or lymph tissue, according to the National Cancer Institute. In addition to this, there are no treatments known to cure small cell lung cancer in the majority of patients, and many are encouraged to seek out clinical trials for the disease.

“I’ve researched a ton. You know, you’ve got to be an advocate for yourself. There are a number of new things going on with immunotherapy and other targeted drugs, but you have to get them through clinical trials since they aren’t FDA approved drugs. So, ever since March, I’ve been chasing clinical trial drugs,” Mike said.

Though the first doctor Mike visited with treated clinical trials as “a waste of time and money,” Mike began seeking out other doctors who were able to get him started on different clinical trials for his disease. He began on immunotherapy in March of 2016, which showed responses such as shrinking of cancer cells for around six months, until the cancer became too resistant to the drug. He then switched to an experimental drug out of St. Louis.

“On the current treatment, it’s pretty harsh, so I’ve felt a lot more fatigue and had to quit working about two months ago because it was just too difficult on this particular treatment. But, I got good results lately from that, so we’re just continuing on and trying to be positive, you know, do whatever options are out there, because I just don’t want to give up,” Mike said.

The Fight

Despite the diagnosis, Mike said he was “ready to fight.” And so he did – Mike is on his 15th month since being diagnosed, while most are predicted to only live six to nine months with the disease.

“I’m really just going to fight, and I hope I’m one of those really obscure statistics where I live for two years or more,” Mike said.

Though clinical trials have helped shrink the malignant cells in his lungs and allowed him to live longer than statistically expected, Mike claims the side effects have been frustrating. The treatment and the disease have taken his energy out of him. Mike had to stop coaching at Dynasty at the end of the season and also had to stop working.

“If I don’t have the energy to walk down to the mailbox, it’s really frustrating. Things that you probably don’t even think about that you do every day, sometimes those are a struggle for me. That gets very frustrating: taking a shower, making yourself dinner. I mean, I can usually do it, but there’s occasions when I can’t, and it just makes me feel helpless when I have to depend on other people,” Mike said.

Mike’s biggest concern after being diagnosed was his family. In addition to Cassidy, the Crists have two more daughters: Allison, an eighth grader at Lexington Trails Middle School, and Lydia, a sixth grader at Mill Creek Middle School. Lynn has been a stay-at-home mom since Cassidy was born and is back in school to go into the medical field.

“The biggest thing for me is my family and wanting to survive long enough so that they  can be stable because my wife hasn’t worked for the last, I mean, ever since Cassidy was born we decided she [Lynn] was going to stay home and help. Luckily, my job was good enough that we could do that. So, she’s going back to school to go into the medical field, but it’s going to take her 18 to 24 months. So, everything I do and my goal is to stay around as long as I can so that she doesn’t have to go back to work right away. Hopefully that’s two years,” Mike said. “Whatever it is, I’m going to fight as long as I can so that she doesn’t have to be the sole financial income person.”

Along with that, Mike hopes to eventually gain the energy to get back in the gym coaching and playing volleyball and also get back to other things he enjoys.

The Family

Since his diagnosis, the Crist family has received an outpouring of support from friends and co-workers, but most especially from their Dynasty family. From current teammates all the way to people they have never been involved with outside of seeing each other from time to time at the gym, Mike has received an overwhelming amount of support from the families at Dynasty.

“A lot of the people on my team have been really supportive. I can tell they feel genuinely sad about it. Some of them think about my dad as like a father figure, I guess, since he’s been their coach for so long, and they’re really supportive,” Cassidy said.

The club has done several fundraisers for the family, such as donating gift card baskets to them. The biggest thing the club has done for Mike, though, was naming their new gym after him, which was formally dedicated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 10. Initially, Mike refused the offer, as many coaches and other staff members had been at Dynasty much longer than he had, but Larson and Oaks gave him no choice – the decision was already made.

“It’s a real big honor, to have your name possibly live on beyond maybe when I’m here is just kind of mind-blowing, really, and that they would just be generous enough to do that for me. It hits home pretty hard,” Mike said.

Which was exactly what Larson had in mind – allowing Mike’s name and everything he did for Dynasty to continue to live on, as well as showing the Crist family the love and support flooding out of the family at Dynasty.

“He’s a special man. We want people to remember his contributions to the club and the legacy of excellence he left,” Larson said. “We also want his wife and kids to know how much we loved him. He was a special man as a husband and father, but he meant a lot of things to many people outside of his home. We want his family to know that he is loved by many.”

The Legacy

Though it has brought many hardships, Mike has seen his life and his outlook on it change in positive ways, despite the arduous diagnosis. Most importantly, he has learned to “slow down a little bit and just enjoy the people.”

“I just cherish the friendships and the kid relationships that are reciprocated now. Sometimes we can get so busy, even I can get busy, that someone will want to come over and say hi and I’ll be like, I’m a little too busy. You know, I think what I’ve learned is to stop and not get caught up in the daily work … and try to build relationships and connect with people more,” Mike said.

Though he is no longer coaching, Mike will always cherish the family feel he got from Dynasty and all of the connections he has made through volleyball, most especially the players he coached along with his daughters.

“I kind of had this slogan one [season], where I said ‘okay, this year we’re going to be tenacious, we’re going to be positive, and we’re going to be steady all year long.’ I think that’s kind of how I like to approach life,” Mike said. “So, if there’s one message I would give to them [the players], I’d give them that. To help them through life.”