White River Junction
Raynolds — the decorated Upper Valley Aquatic Center swim coach known as much for her passionate guidance along with widespread knowledge — became the fourth member of her family to be afflicted with breast cancer when she was diagnosed in September 2015. Though doctors advised immediate radiation treatment, she put it off in order to be there for her athletes through the fall competition season. She began treatment one year ago this week.
Raynolds, 53, has since been declared breast cancer-free, but stage two ovarian cancer was detected during an unrelated test in March. Unlike the breast cancer battle, this one required chemotherapy and, unavoidably, time away from the team.
She kept the latter to a minimum, coaching then-Kimball Union Academy senior Hannah Cox through the Olympic Trials in June. Raynolds had entered her second round of chemotherapy that same month, allowing her athletes to shave her head during a team picnic so it wouldn’t be as shocking when she later showed up bald.
“My sister (Madeline), my mother (Ann) and I were all diagnosed with breast cancer at age 51, and my great aunt also had it,” said Raynolds, a former 16-time collegiate All-American at Ithaca College who has several additional relatives who’ve encountered forms of cancer.
“It’s totally hereditary. I was at the 2015 World Junior Championships in Singapore (with Cox) when I first felt the lump. I suspected what it was, but I’d learned a lot from my mom and my sister. ‘Healthy denial’ is what I call the way we deal with it, which is the ability to compartmentalize our stress over the situation so that it doesn’t have any effect over my coaching, to keep it at a low simmer in the back corner of your mind and not make it a crisis more than it already is.”
Following her ovarian cancer diagnosis, Raynolds and Cox made training schedule adjustments as necessary. Rather than a distraction, Cox found inspiration in witnessing her coach’s battle.
“In hindsight, it’s amazing to think of how well she persevered,” Cox said in a phone interview from her home in Hartland, on break following her first semester at the University of Arizona, where she swims for the Wildcats.
Cox earned bronze in the 200-meter freestyle at junior worlds and was eighth in the 400 free at the Olympic trials, setting herself up to try out for the U.S. swim team next year.
“It was a big year for (my swimming), and Dorsi was amazing during the whole process,” Cox said. “I knew that the most important thing was that she take care of herself; that’s obviously more important than any swim meet. We were able to work through it together.”
During the thick of chemo treatment over the summer, Raynolds inevitably missed practice time with the UVAC swim team, which carries 160 swimmers ages 5-18. Raynolds normally works with the older and more experienced swimmers, a duty taken over by fellow coaches Jen Rybeck Houde and Brian Diranne in her absence.
“You can’t really replace Dorsi’s passion or leadership. That’s pretty hard to duplicate,” Rybeck Houde said. “We had a 16-year-old swimmer, Kristian Hansen, getting ready for junior nationals, and it was kind of day-to-day. I think when Dorsi had all of the athletes cut her hair, that was a good thing for them. She was able to laugh and joke about what she was going through, but the kids also got to have an experience to see it and understand it was real.”
Her last round of chemo completed in early September, Raynolds’ hair is re-growing and she’s been declared cancer-free.
She’s back full-time with UVAC, with a new perspective that she says has enhanced the intensity of her coaching. That’s significant for someone who’s always carried a fiesty — yet always humanistic — approach to the craft.
“The way I coach is so much more intense now, because cancer gave me so much of an acute awareness,” Raynolds said. “I’m more (attentive) to what’s going on in the kids’ lives and their struggles, whether it be a (parental) divorce or they’re having surgery or their big brother is picking on them. I’m much more interested in learning about what makes them tick as a way to help seize their potential. … Everything is richer now. It’s as though I was only seeing black and white and now everything is in color.”
Good news has accumulated for Raynolds, who was recently named with Cox to USA Swimming’s World 100 list recognizing the nation’s top 50 male and female athletes ages 18 and under. She also learned that the University at Buffalo, where she previously coached for 13 seasons, is naming a newly acquired starting block for her.
Naturally, Raynolds prefers to keep attention on the UVAC program. She takes pride in its 12th overall finish at last weekend’s New England Senior Championships at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, its best-ever showing there, and looks forward to working with 14-year-old Windsor resident and backstroke specialist Jack Wadsworth as he aims for a berth in next year’s junior nationals.
Thirteen-year-old breaststroke competitor Isabelle Hiller, of Woodstock, also is promising, having already qualified for Eastern Zone Sectionals next March at Ithaca.
Just like before her cancer battle, Raynolds’ voice takes on more pronounced emphasis when she begins to speak of her athletes.
“Isabelle is just awesome, and Jack is ranked second in the country among all 14-year-olds right now,” Raynolds said. “It’s pretty exciting.”
As it is for UVAC to have its coach back.
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.