Nothing ordinary about him

You won’t find Jeff Kingsbury’s name among this year’s list of all-league athletes. Indeed, he wasn’t even the top distance runner on his Cheney High School teams.

And though the words “inspiration” and “hero” are oft overused when describing an athlete, those superlatives cannot be used enough, say those who know him, when describing the recent graduate who was a four-year cross country and three-year track performer for the Blackhawks.

“I can’t say for the team, but for me he was definitely an inspiration,” said classmate and fellow distance runner Patrick Folsom. “He’s one of my personal heroes.”

Said Cheney track coach Joan Hisaw, “He’s been an inspiration and motivation for all of us. You can’t have a bad day when you’re around Jeff Kingsbury.”

Kingsbury, who ran varsity cross country as a freshman, was diagnosed with leukemia at the end of the basketball season. The diagnostic phase was spent hospitalized and he missed school during spring term and the track season. But he was back running cross country and track the next year.

He competed for the rest of his high school career, culminating with the district meet at University High on May 14, all the while taking chemotherapy treatments with pills and through a port inserted into his chest.

And he did it all with humility and aplomb, refusing to draw attention to himself. He simply never considered it a big deal.

“I don’t think of it as some heroic thing that’s being done,” Kingsbury said. “After a while it becomes part of your life, you get used to it and that’s just how it is.”

Despite competing in cross country regionals as a freshman distance runner, Kingsbury sensed that something was wrong when he struggled with windsprints during the basketball season.

“Sometimes I’d just walk it in,” he said. “It was totally unlike me.”

But the quiet youngster kept his concerns to himself, said his mother, Monica. It wasn’t until a friend at a shooting range asked her if Jeff was OK, that she realized he needed to be checked out by a doctor.

“Jeff had told me, ‘The kids say my skin is weird,’ and I’d tell him, ‘I can’t tell, we’re all kind of pale,’ ” Monica said. “It wasn’t until I took him to the range and the man said, ‘I’ve never seen such a jaundiced kid in my life,’ that I said, ‘We’re going tomorrow.’ ”

In just his freshman year in high school, with the opportunity to compete in sports, the Kingsbury family was dealt a major shock.

Jeff lives for the outdoors. He’s a small game hunter and fly fisherman who intends to major in wildlife resources at the University of Idaho.

He said he’d never taken a pill in his life and it took him glasses of water to learn to swallow one. But Monica said the doctors told them Jeff could continue running and should maintain as normal a lifestyle as possible. He took the advice to heart.

“It was nothing for Jeff to have a chemo treatment and run that afternoon,” she said. “Maybe he’d not be as fast, maybe he’d run like the wind.”

“He was so unselfish about the whole thing,” said cross country coach Jay Martin. “I know it sounds kind of trite, but he was such a role model because he just wasn’t a complainer and had all the right in the world to complain.”

Martin said it got to the point, after Kingsbury’s hair grew back in following treatments, that he forgot his runner had cancer. He didn’t want to be used as an example or have attention called to himself, Martin said.

Over the course of Kingsbury’s distance career, he competed in cross country regionals all four years, finishing as high as 39th last fall. His sophomore season, the first following the diagnosis, he was the Blackhawks’ No. 4 runner on the seven-man team.

His track times were modest, 4 minutes, 58 seconds his best for 1,600 meters and 11:00 for the 3,200. There were admitted frustrations, wondering how fast he could go had he been healthy, said his mother, but always high hopes with each ensuing season.

“Honestly,” said Hisaw, “he wouldn’t even tell us when he had a chemo treatment. He never used it as an excuse.”

He became a team captain in both cross country and track, a leader so dedicated that even on a bad day following treatment, he insisted on attending meets. This year he was worried he’d miss the Clarkston Invitational, because he hadn’t been able to be at a practice.

“He felt as a team captain, it was his responsibility to be there,” said Hisaw, “not for himself, but for the rest of the team.”

A favorite memory for fellow cross country captain Folsom was at the team banquet, when almost all the awards went to Kingsbury.

“Since I was the only one left giving the awards, I had a great time standing up there giving them to him,” said Folsom. “He’s a great guy who deserved every bit of them.”

Kingsbury underwent his final chemotherapy treatment a few weeks ago. He will learn the results of his bone marrow test today and the port is due to come out next week. Periodic testing over the next year will determine if the leukemia is gone.

One thing that will never change for him is his desire to fish and the attitude that has been such inspiration to those around him.

“Leukemia is different for everybody,” Jeff Kingsbury said. “It might be because some people take it seriously that it changes their whole life. Since I haven’t let it change my life and don’t take it too stressful, it doesn’t seem like it’s that different.”