Arbor View High School incoming freshman quarterback Thaddeus Thatcher, 16, poses at the school Thursday, June 29, 2023.
Tuesday, July 4, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Thaddeus Thatcher is going through hours of tests at the doctor’s office and is noticeably impatient.
He’s got football practice at Arbor View High School to get to.
They are taking blood work to evaluate his white cell counts, hooking him up to an electrocardiogram to measure the strength of his heart, having him meet with mental health professionals and more in a four-hour visit.
It’s an annual appointment for the 15-year-old Thatcher, whose leukemia has been in remission for a few years. Still, his family is understandably nervous, thinking back to the years of their youngest child being a cancer patient.
He was a first-grader on Oct. 22, 2014, when he was diagnosed.
“You always have fear in the back of your mind,” said his mother, Chrissie Thatcher, about the possibility of the cancer returning. “Those (blood) counts loom over you.”
Thaddeus, who received a clean bill of health, mostly takes the medical process in stride and is accustomed to seeing doctors and being poked by needles, his family says. It’s been that way since he was 8.
That calmness is also what makes him an emerging quarterback, Arbor View coach Matt Gerber said. The freshman made the Arbor View varsity team — a rarity for a marquee position.
“Nothing presented to him will freak him out or cause him to waver because has been through the biggest battle there is,” Gerber said. “He is very positive in what he does.”
Catching college scouts’ eyes
Thatcher, a 6-foot-2 dual threat quarterback, has been competing for the starting position all summer for Arbor View. He’s shown flashes of potential in team camps and passing tournaments at Utah Tech, Southern Utah University and UNLV.
“I don’t feel any pressure,” Thatcher said. “Pressure is the last thing on my mind. I just want to make plays.”
He’s quickly learned the offense and has shown the ability to make many throws, Gerber said.
Those efforts caught the eye of the UNLV coaching staff, which on June 20 after the Rebels’ passing tournament offered Thatcher a scholarship. It was his first offer — and extremely meaningful for the family because it was UNLV.
Thatcher, after all, is already an honorary Rebel.
He received that status in 2017 with the help of Team Impact, a group that works to improve the quality of life for children facing life-threatening illness. They coordinated with UNLV, which went above and beyond in holding a ceremonial signing to bring Thatcher into the program and hosting him at multiple practices.
UNLV players also visited him at school. The university even issued a press release announcing his signing.
“We love UNLV. That (offer) meant a lot to all of us,” Chrissie Thatcher said.
Thatcher’s parents, both educators, have degrees from UNLV. His older brother, junior linebacker Christian Thatcher, also has a scholarship offer from UNLV — one of many colleges pursuing the consensus four-star recruit.
When the family got settled at home after the UNLV camp last month, they started scrolling through old photos and realized their football-playing children had something in common. Both received their first scholarship offer on June 20.
Christian Thatcher was offered a scholarship by Southern Utah on June 20, 2021, also a few weeks before he started attending Arbor View.
Versatile athlete
This is Gerber’s 29th year coaching high school football in Southern Nevada. He’s only played a freshman on the varsity team a handful of times, most notably elevating Tyrell Crosby midway through his ninth-grade season when he was coached at Green Valley High School.
Crosby went on to star at the University of Oregon and play four seasons with the Detroit Lions.
“It’s a hard thing to do. You have to be physically ready and mentally ready,” Gerber said. “The pace of the game from youth football to the varsity level is a big jump.”
But Thaddeus Thatcher appears to be an exceptional athlete. He excelled in everything he played as a child, his father, Jamie, said.
In basketball, he plays shooting guard for Vegas Elite — one of the nation’s premier club programs — and is expected to make the varsity team at Arbor View. He was a Level 6 gymnast (Level 10 is the highest) as a youth in taking after his mother, who was a dancer with the Nevada Ballet Theatre and used to take Thaddeus with her to practices. And in wrestling, while still receiving cancer treatment at age 8, he won one of wrestling’s top youth tournaments, the Beehive Brawl in Utah. He was also a black belt in karate.
The background in gymnastics and karate is paramount for football because “as quarterback you have to be flexible to take hits,” Thaddeus Thatcher said.
Many athletes, when they reach high school, focus on one sport, spending the offseason working with a personal trainer or coach in hopes of finding a spot on a college roster.
Thaddeus Thatcher’s approach is different. The first time he received specialty training at quarterback was during practices at Arbor View, and in winter, he’ll play basketball.
“Our kids are old-fashioned,” Jamie Thatcher said. “Whatever season it is, that’s the sport they’ll play.”
His fight with leukemia
Thaddeus Thatcher is looking forward to high school for more than competing with the football team. When classes begin next month, it will be the first time since first grade that he will be a full-time student taking in-person classes.
Cancer treatments gutted most of elementary school and then came school closures during the coronavirus pandemic while he was in middle school. He’s got plenty of friends from athletic teams, but there’s nothing like sitting in a classroom each day making new acquaintances.
He’s been a partial participant at school since October 2014, when his parents noticed their son had bruises on his leg — which they initially thought was the product of football and wrestling. He also had a stuffy nose and told his parents he needed to rest.
When they took him to Summerlin Hospital, medical staff quickly diagnosed him with T-cell leukemia, an aggressive cancer that is characterized by the out-of-control growth of mature T-cells, according to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. T-cells are a type of white blood cell that protects the body from infections.
Within a few hours, a catheter was put into the child’s chest and he started a regimen of 28 days of chemotherapy as part of more than three years of treatment.
He went from a child who went from sport to sport looking for the next challenge to being hospitalized facing another, much bigger challenge.
Along the way, the family decided being involved in sports needed to indirectly be part of his recovery. So, while still going through the initial round of chemotherapy treatment, Thatcher rejoined his youth football team at quarterback.
He would be tackled like the other children — and get back up like the other children.
“He’s a tough and strong kid,” said Jamie Thatcher, who was his son’s coach.
Approximately 4,000 children each year in the U.S. are diagnosed with leukemia, according to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Those with T-cell leukemia have a five-year survival rate of 85%, according to Medical News Today.
Thaddeus Thatcher was so young when he was diagnosed that it’s mostly a vague memory. There are plenty of pictures of him without any hair from the treatment that serve as a reminder of how fortunate he is.
And, of course, there are those annual checkups to confirm he’s still cancer-free and able to pursue his dreams.
