PARKER — During her darkest days, when she was unable to stand, walk or pick up a glass of water, Peyton Palermo found strength in the sport that taught her to battle.
“Tennis helped carry me through,” the 16-year-old said. “I don’t think I’d be where I am today without tennis. And here I am.”
When the Colorado girls state tournament begins Thursday at the Gates Tennis Center, Palermo won’t be competing. Her season ended with a loss at regionals.
It’s just as well. If champions are measured by the size of the obstacles they overcome, there probably wouldn’t be a state title trophy big enough for the Legend High School sophomore.
After battling back from multiple brain surgeries, the loss of mobility on the right side of her body and years of grueling therapy, Palermo began winning again, one inspirational volley at a time.
“This is a girl who had the world stacked on her shoulders and could have easily given up,” said Kollman Gearhart, the Regis Jesuit coach who helped tutor Palermo for almost four years. “She didn’t give up.”
Four years ago, before the unlikely return of a tumor that latched onto her brain for the first time at age 5, Palermo’s success on the tennis court was outsized only by her dreams: to become the best girls player in the state, and then play for the University of Oklahoma.
“She absolutely had the right mind-set for it,” said Ryan Segelke, founder of the High Altitude Tennis academy in Parker.
Palermo began playing tennis at age 7. Segelke put Palermo through her first workout at his academy when she was 10. During her first session, Peyton’s face was “white as a ghost,” her legs shook like tree branches and there were tears in her eyes.
“We were curious whether she’d come back after that first day,” Segelke said.
That was until he heard Palermo raving to her father about how much she loved the workout as they walked to the car. Segelke knew he had a competitor on his hands. Palermo was on the rise, at one point working up to the No. 11 junior ranking in the state.
“She was on a roll,” said Celeste Palermo, Peyton’s mother. “Then she woke up and couldn’t feel the right side of her body.”
When Palermo was 12, just as she was playing the best tennis of her young life, doctors told her and her family the brain tumor was back. The news was stunning. The tumor, juvenile pilocytic astrocytoma, had been successfully removed seven years earlier through multiple, complication-free surgeries. It was given a 3 percent chance of recurrence, at best, by doctors.
Now it was back. Still, optimism prevailed.
“Her first surgery (at age 5) had these perfect outcomes,” Celeste Palermo said. “We knew there was a risk, but we saw a little bit through rose-colored glasses as far as the outcome.”
Once again, doctors were able to remove the tumor from Peyton’s brain. But when she woke up in a recovery room at Children’s Hospital Colorado, she knew something wasn’t right.
Losing muscular control
“I could feel it, but I couldn’t control it,” Palermo said of the muscles on the right side of her body. “I tried to stand up and I fell immediately. I tried to grab a glass of water and my hand went the opposite way. It was pretty scary. I didn’t really know what was going on. I kind of expected that I would be a little shaken up, but I didn’t expect that I would lose everything.”
Palermo had lost all muscular control on the right side of her body. Complications from the surgery had affected her speech, vision and mobility to varying degrees. The next two years were filled with grueling occupational and physical therapy.
All the while, Palermo yearned to play tennis again. But when she had recovered enough to return to the game 18 months later, nothing was the same.
“It was definitely frustrating,” she said.
Gearhart, the Regis Jesuit coach, could see that the game that drove her was also driving her mad.
“When I first saw her,” Gearhart said, “she could barely pick up the racket with her right hand.”
But Palermo kept pushing. Before she underwent a second round of surgeries, Palermo and her family made bracelets with her own personal motto: Be strong. Play hard. Dig deep.
“I don’t think she realized at the time,” Celeste Palermo said, “what those words would come to mean.”
Palermo leaned on those words, even in the face of numerous setbacks. When she arrived at Legend as a freshman, she didn’t make the varsity team, a scenario she thought impossible two years earlier.
Still, she kept fighting. This year, she made the varsity and battled through an up-and-down season.
Gearhart, who had watched Palermo fight through the frustration, knew what the accomplishment meant. So, when Regis Jesuit hosted Legend in a match last month, he wanted people to know just how far she had come. During the introductions prior to the match, he had each of his Regis players hand Palermo a rose and give her a hug.
“This is about more than tennis,” he told the girls. Then he turned to Peyton. “The dream is no longer the dream. The moment has been made!”
Giving back
Palermo has found peace with the game she loves. She realizes she won’t play the game competitively in college, as she once hoped. But perhaps it can be something even greater.
“I don’t always know how to process it,” she said, “but I’m learning to focus less on the big picture and more on the small picture, what’s right in front of me.”
Palermo will undergo yearly scans for brain tumors for at least the next three years. She is envisioning a possible career in physical therapy.
“I don’t want anybody to go through what I did,” she said. “That’s my goal, to find a cure.”
With that goal in mind, Palermo and her family began a charity called Peyton’s Hope, with a long-term goal of raising $2 million for pediatric brain tumor research. They’ve raised about $130,000 so far with plans for a number of fundraising events on the horizon.
For now, Palermo plans to enjoy her final two seasons of high school tennis. The game teaches her to battle. Now, she’s inspiring others to do the same.
“Pain teaches us a lot about life,” her mother said. “At every instance, there have been frustrations, but to watch her continue on … I couldn’t be more proud.”
Nick Kosmider: 303-954-1516, nkosmider@denverpost.com or
Peyton’s payback
Her time at Children’s Hospital Colorado inspired Peyton Palermo and her family to create Peyton’s Hope, a charity aiming to raise money for pediatric brain tumor research. A closer look at the charity:
Created: 2011
Partnered with: Children’s Hospital Colorado
Goal: Raise $2 million for pediatric brain tumor research endowment
Money raised: $130,000
Website:
Inspiration: “Peyton doesn’t want any other kid to go through what she went through,” said Celeste Palermo, Peyton’s mother.