Originally aired January 25, 2002

A few years ago it looked like Amanda Cleveland would never play basketball again. Just going for a walk was out of the question. She was one of the top basketball players in the country when she enrolled at Nebraska. Then she got sick, with a disease that threatened her life. Amanda switched her focus from basketball to survival. Gradually she got better, and eventually basketball came back into the picture. “Statewide’s” Perry Stoner brings us Amanda’s story, the tale of a Husker on the rebound.

VIDEOS

Watch the Perspective story here:
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Coach Paul Sanderford discusses getting Amanda back on the basketball team:
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Coach Sanderford says Amanda is a success:
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Amanda Cleveland says she used something she learned in basketball for dealing with pain when she was ill:
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Amanda talks about when she thought she might be able to play basketball again:
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Amanda says basketball isn't as important as it used to be:
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Amanda taking part in a basketball drill:
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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript of Perspective

Reported by Statewide correspondent, Perry Stoner .

[Paul Sanderford]You know I see her everyday and I'm just amazed that she's there.
[Amanda Cleveland]I never was sure if I would ever make it. I hate saying that but I just new knew.
[Sanderford]Never entered my mind that she would play basketball again. You know I was just hoping that she could live a normal life.
Amanda Cleveland is living a normal life. Playing major college basketball may not be normal for most, but it is if you have high school All-American credentials.
[Cleveland]We traveled a lot with the AAU team. And we won two national championships. I was always in and out of school because we was just traveling all the time. I didn't get a chance to enjoy my graduation because we had to fly out to New Orleans for our Junior Olympic game.
She signed to play at Nebraska just before Paul Sanderford was hired as coach. One of the first things he did after taking the job was watch her play in an AAU game.
[ Sanderford]It really even excited me more than I was already excited about coming to Nebraska 'cause I said there's my center of the future. And you know, then we've been through a lot since that time.
Amanda's freshman year, 1997 started out like she and Sanderford thought it would.
[ Sanderford]I told my assistants that kid will be starting by Christmas.
But just a few games into the season everything changed. Amanda had the college game but her stamina was lacking.
[Sanderford]You know, I was concerned because I knew we were really pushing those kids in conditioning. We were pushing them on the floor. Her recovery time was pretty good but she couldn't maintain the high level of running or the high level of competing for long periods of time.
[ Cleveland]Slowly I started getting fatigued at practice. And we couldn't figure out why, what was the cause of it. We was running and I think I was like fifth to the end and he told us to start over again. And I ran up to him and said there was something wrong with me, I'm just so tired.
[ Sanderford]Instead of getting better it got a little worse and that's… then I noticed the bruises one day at practice. And that's when we basically sent her in for some blood work. At the time I thought maybe she was anemic.
[Cleveland]So I went to see the trainer and then I went to the health center. They ran some tests on me and they saw that my hemoglobin was low, my white cells was low and there was something wrong with my liver.
Then Amanda went to Omaha to see a medical specialist.
[Cleveland]He came out and he was… look you've got a serious condition. And I was like, "Well, what is it?" He was like, "You have Aplastic Anemia." And I never heard of it, I didn't know what it was. And he was like, "Look, we've got to get you home right now."
By the next day she was on the way home to the Dallas area. Basketball and everything that had been normal for the player they AC was gone.
[Cleveland]So I was like nineteen… or eighteen years old and I'm like, "Oh my God, what's going on?" You know, help me out; let me know what this is. And I was scared and everything.
Walking on the Lincoln campus today, Amanda doesn't show any signs that she once fought an often fatal disease. Aplastic Anemia effects bone marrow. It causes the body to quit making white blood cells and platelets. That damages the immune system.
No one in Amanda's family matched her blood type, so bone marrow transplants were not possible. Early in 1998, doctors began medical treatment.
[Cleveland]And when he explained it to me, a dose of medicine just going into my bone marrow to kill off my bone marrow. And during this time I would be in the hospital for about three weeks and I would not really be able to see any of my family because I have no white cells. And that way I could get an infection from anybody.
For the next several months, Amanda was restricted to protect her immune system. Restricted from things taken for granted, simple things like going outside for a walk. She was in and out of the hospital, sometimes for medicine, other times when her condition worsened.
[Cleveland]I had fatigueness. I was nauseated where I couldn't eat and I was in a lot of pain during that time because some of the medicine they gave me… the hormone pills they gave me. The medicine settled in my nerves so my nerves would hurt all the time. And one time I was hurting so bad that I was just crying.
Today Amanda can laugh about some of the things she went through. Like riding with her father on one of the urgent trips to the hospital.
[Cleveland]My dad kept talking and talking to me. He was like, "Amanda, what are you thinking? What's going on? What highway are we at? What street is this?" Just trying to keep my conscious. And all I knew was I was like, "Oh my God." I said, "Dad, I see the light. I see the light." And he was like… my dad was so funny; he was like, "Don't go to the light. Don't go to the light." I'm like, not that light. I'm talking about the sunlight. Please, the sunlight. And I think that was probably the most funniest part of my experience because my dad thought I was like… the real light!
[Sanderford]I thought about AC a little bit every day.
And the team kept her in mind too as they continued her freshman season. But basketball was the last thing on AC's mind.
[Cleveland]Yeah, they sent me tapes. It made me feel real good but I really couldn't watch it because I didn't have the strength. My mom and dad would just tell me.
Then things got better. She returned to Lincoln for the 1998 fall semester. Amanda became a basketball spectator. Then last season, slowly, she started thinking maybe she could play again.
Now Nebraska's athletic staff keeps a close eye on Amanda. She is taking only iron and vitamin supplements.
[Chad Wade]She's doing a great job for me, strong, powerful. Still needs to get in a little better shape but other than that she's doing a great job. It's been a long road for her but she's done a great job.
[TV announcer]Nebraska trying to be patient. They find Cleveland on the inside, beautiful move by Amanda Cleveland who's getting back into the flow.
With a clean bill of health, AC got back on the court this fall. But she hasn't picked up where she left off three years ago.
[TV announcer]Still has problems with stamina, but you saw from that move what an incredibly strong and athletic player she is.
[Cleveland]I don't think I'll ever be at the level I was in high school or the summer of my college year. But it's a possibility and something I could try this out and I just hope that Coach Sanderford and the players will just work with me on it. From then on out, it's just been more of a mental thing that I've just been trying to fight to get over the hump.
[Sanderford]Mentally its very, very difficult to come back from any major illness, injury. The mental part is much tougher than the physical part. You know, I think she's pretty honest to me about that. You know I respect Amanda and I like Amanda, but at the same time I see that A potential and I can't back off. I'm not going to back off.
Amanda was making progress at the beginning of the season. Then a respiratory illness held her back. A gradual improvement is all she expects coming back from the experience that changed her approach to life off the court too.
[Cleveland]You've got to take life serious. You have to because it can be taken any minute, any time. And you just don't take stuff for granted which I don't anymore. Life before, I took everything for granted. My mom, my dad, my sisters, my friends and how everything just means the world to me.
[Sanderford]You know she's a little more serious. I don't think she's as light-hearted and easy-going. I think she… you know, she tries to blow things off. You know, when something is taken away from you that you worked for, that you've really lived for for a long time, all of a sudden its not there, now she's getting a second opportunity and I'm… Sometimes I wonder if she can embrace that because if he puts too much of herself into it, what happens if she has another setback. And I don't know that she wants to go through that.
[____]Hi honey, how you doing?
[Cleveland]I'm doing good, I'm hanging in there. How you doing?
[____]You feeling okay?
[Cleveland]Um-hmm. Feeling good.
[____]Good. Good. I've been watching you practice.
[Cleveland]Oh no.
[Perry Stoner]The demands of college basketball are great. Amanda isn't giving up though. Like the team and many others never gave up on her.
[Cleveland]I had so many cards and so many letters from so many people from Nebraska. It was just… That just made me emotional that people remembered me and they just cared that much.
[TV announcer]Nebraska with the win, 59-56.
Coach Sanderford wants fifteen to twenty minutes a game and tough defense from Amanda. Right now she's playing about seven minutes a game. He'll keep pushing to make her the best she can be without forgetting how far she's already come.
[Sanderford]You know as a coach you try to push and you try to… I think the thing we all try to do is get kids to max out. All of us in the education business. In athletics it's very similar. You know AC has A potential and anything less than A isn't acceptable in my book. But at the same time just walking, just finishing college, just coming back and competing at practice, you know, she's a success because she never quit. She didn't quit believing, she didn't quit trying.
You know, I look at her now and I'm thinking, you know, miracles do happen.
This may or may not be Amanda's only chance at coming back. She used her redshirt year one of the season's she missed. But Nebraska plans to appeal to the NCAA for a medical hardship. It won't be known until after this season if she will be granted another year of eligibility. Another year to be on the rebound.

Reporting for STATEWIDE this is Perry Stoner.