Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski Connor Sanders is the starting catcher for the Altoona Area High School baseball team. He underwent emergency brain surgery in late October to remove a tumor.

A parent’s worst nightmare is seeing one’s child suffer.

In November of last year, Becky Sanders was already living in that reality with a son in the hospital fighting leukemia and another recovering from brain surgery when her family got a call regarding her third son, Caleb.

“The worst of it was a month after Connor was diagnosed, we got a phone call from the high school that Caleb had suffered a head injury while playing in the Turkey Bowl,” Sanders said. “He was being rushed by ambulance to Altoona’s emergency room. He had been knocked unconscious, and he wasn’t doing so great.

“At that point, I just kept saying to myself, ‘what is happening?’ And it’s an indescribable fear. It’s your children. It isn’t happening to me. It’s happening to my children, and the only way I got through it is with prayer and having faith that Evan is strong, Connor is strong and our family unit is strong and extremely close. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind we were going to get through this and get through it together.”

Tragedy strikes twice

Caleb Sanders ended up being evaluated for a concussion, but the road to recovery for his older brother, Evan, and twin brother, Connor, was much longer.

Evan, now 20, graduated from Altoona Area High School in 2021 and went to college at Saint Francis University, where he experienced a late growth spurt. He played in just nine games his senior year for the Mountain Lions baseball team, but with a second chance in the George B. Kelley Federation summer baseball league, Evan excelled.

“It was satisfying, because I didn’t get the fair shake that everybody deserves in high school sports,” Evan Sanders said. “It was nice that I was able to put my talents to use somewhere else.”

Evan was selected as the league’s 2022 Pitcher of the Year and carried that momentum into last season when he repeated as the top pitcher and led his team, Laurel Medical, to the championship series.

But down the final stretch of that year, he never felt 100 percent and was originally diagnosed with mononucleosis.

“Throughout the summer, I would keep getting sick here and there and then get better,” Evan Sanders said. “Then I had a problem with my finger where it wouldn’t heal because of everything, and that was bothering me. I just did the best I could.”

As the Federation season ended, Evan was re-evaluated by a doctor.

“It was just weeks after the season,” said Brett Sanders, who along with Becky, are the parents of Evan, 18-year-old twins Connor and Caleb and their two older sisters, Hailey, 25, and Peyton, 22. “He went from pitching in the championship game and probably pitching one of the best games I have ever seen him pitch to two weeks later being told that he’s got this condition and that he’s being admitted and he’s starting treatment and that it’s going to be a long process. It took our legs right out from under us as a family. It completely caught us off guard.”

Evan Sanders was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

“It was a little scary at first, but I kept saying from the beginning that there are seven of us in my immediate family,” Evan said. “Not that I’m tougher or better suited for anything than everybody else, but I was just happy I didn’t have to watch any of them go through it.”

Evan had to begin treatment immediately, was unable to return to Saint Francis and spent most of his treatment as an in-patient in Pittsburgh.

“We just knew we had to be there for him,” Connor Sanders said. “But we always knew he was going to pull through. There wasn’t a single doubt in our minds. We knew he would eventually come back the same guy as he was, and he’s done a really good job with that. He’s still there for us. We just had to keep pushing him through everything he was going through, and he never let us down.”

As Evan began his battle, he never expected what came next.

“It was almost overwhelming to see how much support I received,” he said. “I didn’t know that many people even knew who I was. It was crazy to see how many people did know, did care and wanted to help.”

Those supporters included his brothers and the Altoona baseball team, including head coach Tom Smith, who organized a fundraiser before one of the Mountain Lions varsity football games.

“Evan played for us a couple years ago, and then we found out that Evan was fighting leukemia,” Smith said. “We were parking cars to try and raise money for the family at a football game, and the one week Connor was parking cars with me and then a few days later I find out he himself is in Pittsburgh that day undergoing surgery. That had to be such a double whammy to the family.”

Connor, expected to be Altoona’s starting catcher going into his senior year, had been struggling to get through simple daily actions with what his family thought could be migraines.

“He just started having severe headaches,” Brett Sanders said. “They were happening about once a week, maybe a little more frequent than that, but they were lasting days. He wasn’t really able to function. He couldn’t get through school, and that went on for a couple of weeks. He was having them, and then one night he woke up in the middle of the night with a severe headache, which was a red flag from our doctor.”

The overnight headache led to an MRI being scheduled on Oct. 24 which revealed that Connor had pilocytic astrocytoma, a benign tumor on his brain, and needed emergency brain surgery the next day.

Evan was already at the same hospital in which Connor had his brain surgery after a setback a few days earlier.

“Evan was right in the middle of some of his treatment,” Brett Sanders said. “Evan had been home in between blocks of chemotherapy, and he had a side effect from one of his procedures and had actually gone to the hospital in Pittsburgh that same day. Evan was already there in the emergency room when Connor was getting his MRI and diagnosis.”

As his younger brother fought for his life in brain surgery, Evan was unable to check in on him despite being in the same building.

“It was really hard on me. It was devastating,” Evan Sanders said. “I was already over there when he was coming over. I was struggling, so I wasn’t able to get up and move around very well. When I was finally able to get up and move around some, I got up and went straight to the ICU where he was to see him.”

Road to recovery

Evan’s prolonged stays in Pittsburgh and Connor’s rehabilitation period following his successful surgery led to some changes in the Sanders family’s lifestyle.

“At times, it was mass chaos,” Becky Sanders said. “During the summer, our daughters were graduating college. Our oldest graduated from PT school and was going to Florida for a clinical rotation. Meanwhile our second daughter was in Texas all summer for an internship. We were in the middle of taking them across the country and swapping them out while Evan was being diagnosed.”

Becky put her work in private child care completely on hold to spend time in Pittsburgh with Evan while Brett finished his transition from working as a physical therapist at a nursing home in State College to a new position at one in Tyrone.

“I lived in a hospital room with Evan for six months,” Becky Sanders said. “All of his treatments were in-patient, so we lived there. We did very well together. It was a big change and overwhelming. It was scary, but we were surrounded by love and support, which is what really got us through it.”

Hailey and Peyton helped at home, but Hailey’s last clinical rotation as she worked toward becoming a physical therapist was in Windber, so a meal train was set up to feed the kids still at home.

“I would work Monday through Thursday, and then I would leave here Thursday to drive to Pittsburgh and stay from Thursday until Sunday,” Brett Sanders said. “(Becky) would come home while I was there, and she would come back over Sunday when I came home. We would rotate. We have two daughters who took over as the main adults here at home through all of this. Caleb just kept going on and doing what he needed to do like going to school himself.”

From the very beginning of his treatments, Evan helped his parents cope with his diagnosis, something they both struggled with at first.

“At the same time, he was very strong,” Brett Sanders said. “He was strong going into it. He was strong-minded, strong-willed, and he handled it really well, probably better than we did.”

His family returned the favor by always being there with him while he was forced to be away from home.

“It was nice to have something familiar with me the whole time,” Evan Sanders said. “I would have my mom during the week and my dad most of the weekends. It was nice to have them there with me.”

Brett and Becky, both 49, tried to be strong for Evan, but true relief came from outsiders offering a helping hand.

“There was complete and total fear, but once people started realizing what we were going through, it provided us with strength,” Becky Sanders said. “I would say to Brett all the time that you could feel the prayers. We had some fundraisers set up that helped tremendously. I lost my job completely. Brett was in the beginning of a new job, so he had no paid time off. The fundraisers that were done supported us since we lost our incomes during those few months, and they were extremely helpful.”

Connor’s outlook once the surgery was successful seemed more straightforward, and he never believed he would miss his senior season of baseball.

“We knew he might play right after surgery when we talked to his surgeon and he explained how it went,” Brett Sanders said. “He told us the typical recovery time was somewhere around three months or so provided that it was benign and that all his physical abilities returned to his baseline.”

Returning to that baseline, however, proved to be a challenge at first and led to him missing seven weeks of school.

“Immediately after surgery, he had a lot of struggles,” Brett Sanders said. “He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t see clearly and had double vision. He couldn’t do the simplest of things like feeding himself. He struggled with control and coordination, but the doctors were convinced he would return to his baseline within a month or two, and he did after working very hard with it at therapy.”

Once Evan and Connor began to see the light at the end of the tunnel in their recoveries, baseball became a way to mentally heal them.

“Baseball is a huge coping mechanism for our whole family,” Connor Sanders said. “It has been a part of us for so long. Anything that happens, we can escape through baseball. I have a cage that I can go hit, and we spent a lot of time over there trying to get our minds off one thing or another and focusing solely on baseball.”

Love of the game

The Sanders’ love of baseball defined the family long before any health concerns consumed their lives.

“Growing up, it has been such a huge part of our family,” Connor Sanders said. “My dad has raised us since T-ball when we were 3 years old all the way through Little League and high school, it was always part of our family and incorporated into our daily life.”

As it was for Brett Sanders as a child.

“Our start in baseball really came from the East End Little League,” he said. “That was something my father (Jim Sanders) was pretty involved with. He was a league officer and really involved with it. I grew up there and spent my time there before I started playing, while I was playing and after I was done playing. When the boys got old enough to play, I got them out to East End and got them started together. It became a family tradition.”

Following his time in the East End Little League, Brett Sanders played high school baseball for Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic and with Dean Patterson Mazda in the Kelley Federation. After his playing career, Brett helped coach his sons, including Evan during his time playing for Laurel Medical.

“I had a lot of pride over his perseverance in his baseball career,” Brett Sanders said. “You could say he was a late bloomer as far as size. He was always a smaller kid, but the older he got, he got bigger and stronger. The more he grew, he got better. He was always good, but his growth helped him. It was nice to see him stick with it through some of the times where he didn’t have opportunities, and when he got it, it was very gratifying that his perseverance and work he put in paid off.”

While there was plenty of competition between the three brothers, they helped each other on the diamond as well.

“We always had each other to bounce ideas off each other for different advice in one spot or different looks in another spot,” Connor Sanders said. “If one of us was struggling hitting during a summer ball game, we would look to the other. If not that, our dad, because he was there for all of it as well.

“Of course we have a brotherly competition between each other. We want to do better than the other, but in the end, we’re always there for each other. If someone is struggling, we’re always there to pick the other up. Otherwise, what job are we doing as brothers?”

Connor Sanders is Altoona’s starting catcher just six months removed from brain surgery and is hitting .286 and managing a solid pitching staff.

“He’s paid his dues,” Smith said. “He played behind a pretty good catcher in Sean Bettwy, but he also took that as a learning situation. We talked about it last year. He said he was good playing behind somebody that is pretty good and knew he was learning from him. Obviously, he wanted to be out there more last year, but he’s paid his dues and is doing a really nice job behind the plate for us this year.”

Caleb Sanders is often the Mountain Lions’ starting third baseman and recently was the winning pitcher in relief at the Curve Classic championship game at PNG Field.

“Caleb plays some third base for us,” Smith said. “He also pitches for us. We use him in a reliever’s role, and he was in the same situation last year. Caleb does a nice job for us when he’s called upon.”

Evan was in the stands for the Curve Classic title win, a 7-6 triumph over Central, which went 27-0 and won a PIAA championship just two years ago.

One perk of being forced to take a year off school is that Evan has been able to take in his younger brothers’ senior year of baseball from the stands.

“It’s been really nice,” he said. “I think there’s only been one game so far I haven’t been able to make it to, because I was working. To be able to be there and see them play and do really well has been great.”

Evan was thrilled by Connor’s quick recovery.

“It’s nice to see him get back to normal so quick and great that he didn’t have to miss out on any of his senior year,” Evan Sanders said. “In the area, it’s kind of known that he’s the best catcher in the area. It’s great he was able to get out there and prove it to everyone and show what he can do.”

Bright outlook

These days things have almost returned to normal in the Sanders household.

Baseball once again dominates the schedule rather than medical appointments.

“(Evan) finished his treatments in February,” Brett Sanders said. “All of his tests since then have been clear. He’s going monthly for routine checks, and so far they have all been clear. He’s healthy and planning to return to school this fall.”

The outlook down the road also appears positive.

“Evan’s prognosis is good,” his father said. “They told us from the start that the cure rate for his condition was pretty high. They quoted, I think 85 percent. Even from the start, we felt he had an excellent chance at a full recovery. So far, everything has been good. Everything that has happened indicates that he’s going to be OK.”

For Connor, the surgery provided the cure as far as doctors are concerned. Once he returned to his baseline, there was no concern in their mind for a relapse.

“We have always been a very close family,” Evan Sanders said. “It’s nice that we’re all doing well now and can just move on from everything.”

Evan has resumed his job at Dick’s Sporting Goods, where he’s worked off and on for the last five years, and is pursuing a degree at Saint Francis in Criminal Justice. From there, he’d like to find a career in law enforcement.

“It’s nice to be getting back to normal,” Evan Sanders said. “It’s great having regular things back in my life.”

One of those regular things will be baseball. Evan plans to return to the field and play in the Greater Altoona City League with his cousin, Nate Sanders, this summer.

Expect Brett and Becky to be the ones cheering him on the loudest.

“It’s been one of the things that we just looked forward to,” Brett Sanders said. “Getting back to seeing them back doing what they enjoy and excel at and seeing them starting to have some success again after what they worked through to get to that point. We know others out there are struggling, too, and we hope someday we can return the favor the community gave us and be there for other families.”