The Northwest Missouri State University women's soccer team is joining the cause to help Beckett Fowler, son of a former Bearcat player, in his battle with a rare form of cancer - Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor (ATRT).
The Bearcats will play host to a soccer match against Central Missouri on Sunday, Sept. 24 at 1 p.m., as a fundraising opportunity for Beckett's Warriors. This match will be considered a Gold Out, in recognition of childhood cancer awareness month.
T-shirts will be sold at Bearcat Pitch and all funds will be donated to Hope4ATRT, which is getting ATRT funding to research this very new and rare form of cancer.
Beckett is a three-year old son of former Bearcat women's soccer player Tammie Fowler, is fighting a very rare form of brain cancer called ATRT. This form of brain cancer is a fast-growing tumor that begins in the brain and can travel down to the spinal cord. For Beckett, ATRT was just located in the brain.
Tammie (Eiberger) Fowler was on the 2011 Northwest Missouri State University soccer squad and had phenomenal success. She still holds the Northwest single-season records for goals (11) and points (26). She attended Northwest for three years, but spent only one year on the soccer squad after playing three seasons at Saginaw Valley State in Saginaw, Mich. She was named Northwest's women's athlete of the year in 2011 and earned her degree in elementary education.
Shortly after his third birthday in February, Beckett's grandma gave Tammie a call saying something was wrong with Beckett. Shortly after, Beckett was brought in to the hospital for a urgent checkup on what was wrong. Doctors initially said Beckett was anemic. Later on, the family noticed something else with Beckett and decided to take him into a Detroit, Mich., hospital.
Doctors in Detroit determined after an MRI that there was a tumor and they needed to do surgery first thing in the morning. After a long 10-hour surgery, he ended up getting sick and put in the ICU on oxygen so it was unknown how much of the tumor was actually removed. Six days later he was released from the hospital to await the diagnosis. Three days later they got the gut wrenching phone call that the diagnosis was ATRT grade four brain cancer.
Tammie and her family immediately applied to St. Jude's Hospital. They were accepted within hours. It was there they found out that the cancer had not completely been removed and because ATRT has the impact to spread rapidly even if there is the slightest amount left, so St. Jude's did another procedure in which they completed a full gross total resection. This means the doctors completely wiped out the cancer that had been spreading. This procedure took five hours to complete. Doctors informed the family that ATRT was not spreading to Beckett's spinal cord.
Altogether, Beckett has gone through two brain surgeries, 30 rounds of radiation, and is about to begin his fourth out of five rounds of chemotherapy at the end of September.
"St. Jude's essentially saved Beckett's life," Tammie said. "We are forever grateful to the professionals that were there for our family through this entire process.
Tammie and her husband, Brett, were married in 2019 and Beckett came along in Feb. 2020. Tammie has four kids; Aaron (13), Cadence (11), Paisley (9), and Beckett (3).
"Beckett is doing so well, like it is unbelievable how well he is doing," Tammie said. "He is learning, writing and speaking to a great extent. Beckett has been fighting the tremendous rounds of radiation and is packed with energy all the time. Usually children this young who go through these rounds of radiation and chemotherapy don't have as much energy as Beckett. Doctors are actually confused as to why he has this much energy, it's quite miraculous."
Tammie said a test that doctors give to children with brain cancer is conducted to see how well they can read and write. Beckett scored in the 99.9 percentile during these tests.
The Fowler family has reached out to local members of the Utica, Mich., community and they have been tremendous help during this process. Utica shut down a whole area of their town and renamed it "Beckettville" for the week.
