ccTHRIVERS

ccThrivers are a small group of childhood cancer survivors who entered into the top of their pursuits after cancer. ccThrivers are committed to delivering their message of survivorship directly to the childhood cancer community and to the public through their continued performance at the highest levels.

Our team of ccThrivers includes our co-founders, Gavin Shamis and Bryan Fletcher. Gavin and Bryan are both survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia who endured years of the most brutal chemotherapy in all of cancer. Both established themselves as elite athletes after treatment.

ccThrive is not about creating elite athletes, but about keeping the passions and ambitions alive in all children with cancer and helping these kids realize their full potential once off treatment. It does not matter what their dreams are, they could involve sports, the arts or any pursuit. We are here to help kids who want to do their best.

Although nothing would make us happier than every childhood cancer survivor achieving the level of success of a ccThriver, our true dream is that every childhood cancer survivor realizes their full potential, whatever it is and whatever their challenges. All survivors of childhood cancer should have the opportunity to thrive.

Bryan Fletcher

Leukemia – 1990

First Ski Jump – 1991

Off-Treatment – 1995

Sochi Olympian – 2014

USA Nordic Combined Champion – 2014, 2015, 2017

When Bryan was just three years old, he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. It was this diagnosis that started his amazing journey as a Nordic Combined athlete. While still battling cancer, Bryan was introduced to the world of ski jumping and Nordic Combined by some influential people in the sport. He was hooked from day one.

Luckily Bryan was able to divide his time between chemotherapy treatments and ski jumping. Being able to participate in the sport is exactly what kept his spirits alive. Bryan would spend two weeks in Denver, CO undergoing treatments and a week in Steamboat throwing his body off a jump and into the air! But he didn’t stop at the jumps; he decided to push himself further by taking his ambition to the cross-country trails too. Bryan was fully immersed in Nordic Combined by age six.

For Bryan, skiing was a welcome distraction from chemotherapy. The leukemia did it’s best to keep him down. From an allergic reaction to a chemotherapy medication, to suffering a stroke, there were plenty of reasons to hang up his skis. Many would have argued that Bryan should have solely focused on every little medical thing he could do to get out of treatment alive. To Bryan, focusing on getting out alive was not easy or mentally pleasing. Skiing on the other hand was the exact opposite, and because of that, hanging up the skis would have been impossible. To this day Bryan believes that maintaining his passion for skiing is one of the biggest reasons he is still here today. That passion kept him striving harder to do exactly what the doctors said so he could get back to doing the sport he enjoyed so much.

That very passion and determination that kept him alive when he was a child has also led him to a World Cup Victory at Holmenkollen in Oslo, Norway. The victory was a historic moment in his career because he is one of only five Americans to win the event. Those same traits led him to five World Championships teams and helped him capture his first World Championships medal at the 2013 Championships. Finally, they led him to become an Olympian, a two-time national champion, and put 20 individual World Cup top ten finishes under his belt. So it’s fair to say that refusing to hang up the skis is what helped him Thrive!

About Nordic Combined

Nordic Combined is the combination of Ski jumping and Cross Country racing. The two sports are polar opposites in terms of athletic traits. The common thread is that both sports have a free heel, making them Nordic sports. Ski jumping is an explosive, fast twitched muscle sport, while Cross Country is a slow twitch sport all about endurance. When paired together, they create an extremely difficult sport to master. Voted the hardest Olympic sport by USA Today, Nordic Combined is all about finding the ultimate winter athlete.

Team USA has traditionally been the underdog in the sport. Despite that reputation, we have consistently landed results. USA Nordic Combined took home four of a total seven possible medals at the 2010 Olympics. Individual members of the team have taken home seven World Championships medals with the most recent in 2013.

Nordic Combined is an original Olympic sport with its inception in the 1924 games.

The individual format consists of one jump on HS100-145 meter hills. The winner of the jumping starts the Cross Country portion of the race first. The remaining competitors will have to overcome a time deficit based on their jumping performance. The race is 10 kilometers and the first person across the finish line wins!

The team event format consists of a four-man team in which each individual takes one jump. Their combined score determines their starting position. Then athletes ski five kilometers before tagging off to their teammate in relay style race.

Team sprint format is a two-man team. Each skier takes one jump for a combined score. The race is a relay in which each person tags off after each lap. Each skier will ski a 1.5 Kilometer course 5 times for a total of 7.5 kilometers each. As always in Nordic Combined, the first person across the finish line wins.

Gavin Shamis

Leukemia – 2011

Competitive Swimmer – 2011-2013

Chemo Ended Early – 2013

USA Luge Junior National Team – 2014

USA Luge Youth Champion – 2016

Gavin was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was eight years old. His treatment protocol was 39 months of the toughest chemotherapy. Throughout, he tried to stay as active as possible, continuing to swim competitively and moving up to a regional swim team, despite neurological problems in his legs caused by chemo. He was training ninety minutes a day just six weeks after beginning chemo and between blood transfusions. Unable to develop power in his kick for freestyle, Gavin focused on butterfly where the power is more from the core than the legs. Despite being out of the pool for months at a time, he won more then a few races during treatment.

Gavin was determined to do his best, whether it was in swimming, keeping up with schoolwork, in spite of being out of school for almost of three years, or being cooperative with his treatment. His attitude was – whatever it takes. The first year and a half of treatment was the usual hair loss, nausea, and cyclic vomiting. but then, it got much worse. Gavin endured six months of extreme complications, and ultimately, with his liver failing, he was forced to end his treatment a year early.

Coming off treatment, Gavin was determined to reach the highest levels as a swimmer. He quickly developed severe respiratory issues when swimming indoors, where most training and competition occur. Gavin was back for more doctors and medications, one of which made him clinically depressed. After three months, he was diagnosed, with a late effect of his chemo that made it impossible for him to swim indoors, and thus competitively. This realization was his lowest moment, after everything he had already been through cancer robbed him of what he held on to during his years of treatment.

Just five months after Gavin’s last chemo treatment, while still suffering from neurological issues, he participated in a USA Luge screening event near his home in Vermont. Just having heard of the event a few days before, he loved his first taste of sliding, on wheeled sleds down a nearby hill. Then came the physical testing, and he was embarrassed as he could not keep up with the other kids. He was eleven years old, but he ran like he was six. He left dejected.

The USA Luge coaches saw something different, in this coachable and determined kid, and Gavin was thrilled to soon receive an invitation to a screening camp at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. Gavin grabbed every opportunity he could find to slide, traveling to Lake Placid whenever there was track time available. Just six months later, he was named to the USA Luge Junior National Development Team. In his first year on the National team, Gavin won silver at the 2015 Empire State Games, placed 5th at Nationals in Youth B (under 15) and won gold at the 2015 Les Mayers Memorial Classic.

In February 2016, just 32 months after his last chemo, Gavin won the USA Luge Youth B National Championship. Gavin completed the 2017 season as the fourth seeded Junior (under 21) in the country.

After luge, Gavin hopes to attend medical school and become a pediatric hematologist/oncologist. Now in eighth grade, Gavin is a top student and training for the 2022 Olympics.

About Luge

Luge is the fastest sport on ice and the only sliding sport measured to a thousandth of a second.

The United States has two full-length, certified, Olympic-style luge tracks (Park City, Utah and Lake Placid, N.Y.). USA Luge has captured 5 Olympic Medals, 13 World Championship Medals and 16 Junior World Championship Titles. Gavin’s USA Luge teammates just completed two of their most successful seasons on record, having captured a women’s bronze medal at the Olympics in Sochi and men’s World Cup victory in Lake Placid.

Athletes are recruited between the ages of 9 and 13, and it can take over eight years to develop an Olympian in Luge and many more years to develop a champion.