JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Although Jake Tyree has two titanium rods and 46 screws in his back, he can participate in activities such as skiing and driving. It took Jake a few years to master wheelchair basketball, but University of Illinois coach Mike Frogley said the teen could make the national team one day.

Courtesy of the Tyree family

High school senior Jake Tyree, 17, underwent surgery when he was 10 years old to remove part of his spinal column and a 5-inch tumor.

The Roanoke Times | File 2002

Jake Tyree, 9, throws the first pitch at a Salem Avalanche game. A portion of ticket sales went toward his medical expenses. Jake's parents noticed when he was 8 years old that he was starting to run awkwardly and sought medical help.

Jake Tyree is like any other highly recruited basketball player.

He can shoot 3-pointers with a flick of his left wrist.

He can outrace opponents down the floor for easy layups.

He can play shut-down defense on the perimeter.

He can rebound. He can pass. He can dribble.

On bad days, he can be whistled for traveling.

He just can't walk.

Jake Tyree is paralyzed.

The 17-year-old Glenvar High School senior hasn't been able to use his legs since Sept. 23, 2002, when he underwent life-saving surgery to remove a cancerous portion of his spinal cord.

Jake is paralyzed from the middle of his chest down. But he is not out.

Today, Jake will be like any other highly recruited basketball player.

Today, he will sign a letter of intent to play wheelchair basketball for the University of Illinois.

Eight-year-old Jake dismissed the teasing from his friends about the awkward way he had started to run on the baseball field.

Always a coordinated athlete, Jake had begun to kick his legs out sideways on the ball field.

"They would make fun of me, like, 'Run Forrest, run,' " Jake recalled. "I would get tripped up really easily.

"I didn't feel anything was wrong. I just thought that's how everyone felt growing up."

Jean Tyree thought otherwise. A rehabilitation nurse at Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem, she was worried about her oldest son.

So she made a videotape of Jake at play and sent it to a local pediatrician. Jean and her husband, Jerry, a Postal Service employee, were told to consult a neurologist. The neurologist insisted on an MRI.

The MRI revealed the news no parents want to hear.

Jake had a fast-growing cancerous tumor on his spine. And it was a nasty one with a scary name: astrocytoma.

"There are generally two types of spinal-cord tumors," Jean said. "One is like a piece of gum stuck to a wall that you can scrape off, or the other is like taking pieces of yellow and orange Play-Doh and squishing it together.

"Jake had the kind that was squished together."

Jake underwent surgery at the University of Virginia Medical Center to remove the tumor, followed by 23 radiation treatments. A year later it came back, larger.

That surgery did not work either. The tumor was still present and the cancer cells had mutated.

An oncologist came to Jean Tyree with the news.

"Jacob had six months left," she said.

* * *

Jerry and Jean Tyree really had no choice. And they had one week to decide.

Jake could have surgery that would remove much of his spinal cord and leave him paralyzed for life.

Or he would die.

There was no second-guessing.

Jake underwent surgery 10 days after his 10th birthday.

"They told me exactly what would happen," Jake said. "I can live my life in a wheelchair. Cancer's not going to end my life. From a 10-year-old's standpoint, wheelchairs are fun."

Jake's spinal column from what his mother calls "the rib cage down" and a 5-inch, hot dog-sized tumor were removed by Dr. John Jane at UVa.

At the time, Jane was 72 years old.

"I asked him, 'If it meant saving your grandson's life, what would you do?' " Jean Tyree said. "The first time I met him, I said, 'I want to see your hands.' I'm sorry, but at that age, Parkinson's is very common. He laughed."

"He still tells that story to everybody, too," Jerry Tyree added.

Jake wanted to keep the tumor in a jar in his bedroom as a souvenir, but Jane declined. Instead, he has a picture of it stashed away inside the family's home in Western Roanoke County.

What did not kill Jake made him stronger. How else could a youngster accept the choice he and his parents made?

"I had basically lived half a year of my life in a wheelchair," Jake said. "I was expecting it, whereas people who are in car accidents aren't. I had gotten used to it, where they're walking one day and the next day they aren't."

* * *

Put a basketball in child's hands and what will he do?

He might just shoot until he sinks one.

In Jake's case, it took a few years.

Jake's tiny 9-year-old body weighed just 46 pounds after his initial surgery and treatment. He was considerably weakened by his further operations.

At the UVa rehabilitation center, nurses gave him a basketball "to help me mentally as much as physically," Jake said.

His first few attempts hit nothing but chair.

"I struggled a lot," Jake said. "I lost a lot of strength from my surgeries. I struggled just to get the ball up to the net. They would count it if I just touched the net. It took a lot of work to get it there."

As Jake got stronger, he developed an affinity for other wheelchair sports, but basketball held him spellbound, especially when his shots started going through the net.

In the seventh grade, he joined the junior division of a North Carolina team called the Charlotte Rollin' Bobcats. Last year in Denver, Jake led the club to the national championship in the junior varsity division.

Jake's team led a team from Chicago 49-47 in the championship game when he was fouled in the last few seconds.

That's when Charlotte coach Dave Kiley flashed him their secret sign.

"Two weeks before, I had gone down to Tennessee and we were skeet shooting," Jake said. "I actually won a Remington shotgun. I have all the pressure on me. I look over at my coach and he holds his arms up like he's shooting a shotgun. I just laughed and that got all the pressure off of me."

A kid is sitting in a wheelchair with a basketball in his lap. What is he going to do?

"I swished the first free throw," Jake said. "Then I swished the second one and said, 'We just won the national championship.' "

* * *

Illinois was the first university to field an intercollegiate wheelchair basketball program in 1948. The Illini have won 14 National Wheelchair Basketball Association titles, including four under current coach Mike Frogley.

The sport is serious business at Illinois, and Frogley wants Jake to be part of it. He's been recruiting the Glenvar senior since Jake began attending an elite camp on the Illinois campus.

"Jake's coming into a program that's every bit a major college athletic program," Frogley said. "I've had the opportunity to watch Jake for three years. We recruit kids from all over the world. Jake was on our A-list."

The rules in wheelchair basketball are similar to the able-bodied version. Players must propel their chairs no more than twice before dribbling. There is no double-dribble violation.

Wheelchair players are rated 4, 3, 2 or 1 based on the severity of their disability, with Class 1 being the most severely disabled. The total rating of the five players on the floor cannot exceed 14.

Jake carries a rating of 1, making him an extremely valuable recruit.

Ten colleges field wheelchair teams. Frogley said the sport is becoming more popular and competitive for an otherwise tragic reason: Disabled veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan are swelling the ranks.

Nevertheless, weighing 90 pounds with two titanium rods and 46 screws in his back, Jake is a five-star prospect.

"I think he's got a chance to make the national team one day," Frogley said.

* * *

Jake chose Illinois over Missouri, even though he took a liking to the coeds at the Big 12 school.

He's not doing badly at Glenvar.

He was elected homecoming king last fall, showing up for the dance with not one, but two dates.

"I took two of my friends to homecoming this year ... two girls, one on each side," Jake said.

He played tennis with an able-bodied partner and actually won a pair of exhibition matches with the Highlanders last spring.

"What a great kid," Glenvar Principal Joe Hafey said. "He's such a wonderful kid. He's got friends here that run the gamut."

Why not? Since Jake has been a student at Glenvar, the school has installed a working elevator and set of doors activated by a push-button.

"I'll use the door you don't press the button for," Jake said. "Everyone else uses the door you press the button for."

* * *

The decision Jerry and Jean Tyree made for their son opened his door to the world.

He can ski. He can drive his specially equipped Honda Element, the one in which he received a speeding ticket.

He trades barbs with his dad. He picks on his younger brother, Cooper, who has sacrificed greatly for the family's good.

"Jake could pay him back from now till eternity and not be caught up for what that kid's given up for him," Jerry Tyree said.

The Tyrees have plenty of people to thank:

Friends, family and Jake's elementary and middle school classmates and teachers for fundraisers; the Roanoke County school system for allowing him to travel to basketball practices; UVa for making him Virginia's champion ambassador for the Children's Miracle Network; Dr. John Jane for saving his life.

"It's nothing something anyone, nor I, would have picked for us, but the blessings we had have been tremendous," Jean Tyree said. "Some families don't survive this. Some marriages don't survive.

"The Lord's hand has been upon us."