ONLY ON NEWS 5: Gulf Shores High School football player battling cancer
GULF SHORES, Ala. (WKRG) — A gauntlet of praise and adoration welcomed the Gulf Shores Dolphins into the 2024 football season.
Still, one player was missing from the starting lineup: senior offensive lineman Tyler Burkett.
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“I don’t know what my life would be without football, and I don’t want to have that anytime soon,” Burkett said.
Last season, the Friday night lights had never shown brighter on the Gulf Shores Dolphins football squad.
It was a championship season. Burkett was at the top of his game.
But he had a secret.
“I didn’t want them to tell me there was something wrong, and I couldn’t play,” he said.
“He hid it from me for a month or two,” his mom, Jessica Burkett, said. “I just noticed one day he came down the stairs, and his neck was huge. It was really big.”
He thought the swelling in his neck was because of a hit taken during a game. So, after all the cheering stopped last season, there was a trip to the doctor — but not just any doctor.
An oncologist.
“He walked in, and just the look in his eyes was like, I’m 99.9% sure he has lymphoma, and Tyler looked at me and just lost it,” Jessica said. “We both did.”
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Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system, which helps your body fight germs and disease. It was a diagnosis that brought Burkett to his knees.
“I thought I would never play football because that is what they made it seem like,” he said.
His first call after the diagnosis was to his head coach, Mark Hudspeth. It’s one of those phone calls you never forget.
“It hurt, and it hurt us all, and I’m just so proud of the way he has fought it, and I’m praying that he’s got a lot of great times and a lot of football ahead of him.”
Biopsies and six months of chemotherapy would follow.
Burkett lost his hair and, at times, his hope.
“I wanted to shut down and be like, whatever, I’m done. Why is this happening to me?”
The goal has always been to play football again, but two weeks after his chemo ended, Tyler and his Mom got the news no one was prepared for.
“Tyler was absolutely devastated,” says Jessica. “He looked at me and just said Momma, Momma no! This can’t be.”
Scans showed the cancer was still there in his neck and now in his stomach. He would need more chemo and a bone marrow transplant.
As the new football season started, Burkett would find himself in an unfamiliar place, the sidelines.
“That was rough ’cause I want to be out there so bad. So, I was just sitting in the tent trying to help them as much as I could.”
He is beginning to make some progress.
While waiting for the doctors to decide what is next, he has begun working out again with the team.
“He is a very unselfish young man,” says Coach Hudspeth. “He works hard. He has dreams and aspirations and I hope I can help him achieve those.”
His worst fear has already been realized:
“That it could still be here,” he said. “That I could still have this cancer.”
Family and football have gotten him through a lot this last year.
“Running out to the sidelines before the game with my team will make me forget about it all,” he says.
And it could be the best medicine that helps him win the biggest game of all.
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