WINTER PARK, Fla. \u2014\u00a0In his final season of college basketball, Mayson Quartlebaum is having arguably his best year on the floor.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
\u00a0Mayson\u00a0Quartlebaum is a graduate student at Rollins, playing his final year of college basketball
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\u00a0In 2024, he was diagnosed with\u00a0Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma after noticing a lump in his neck
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\u00a0He is now in remission and had a great second half of the season for the Tars, averaging close to 10 points and five rebounds a game<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-6, 235-pound forward has started the past 13 games for the Tars. He is averaging close to 10 points and five rebounds a game.<\/p>\n
But his time in Florida was never really the plan.\u00a0Quartlebaum graduated from Missouri-St. Louis in 2024 and was planning on enlisting in the U.S. Army. He was on a study trip abroad when he noticed a lump in his neck. A month later, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of look at it as a blessing in disguise because the ball stops bouncing for everyone at some point,” Quartlebaum said. “But it gave me the opportunity to come back out for another year and come to Rollins, and I’ve been just enjoying my experience to the fullest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quartlebaum spent the next year recovering.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was wild. It was just so out of my control and just so surreal. I didn’t really stress about it. I don’t know, I was just kind of taking it as it went,\u201d Quartlebaum said.<\/p>\n
He had an extra year of college eligibility because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rollins gave him the opportunity to play one final season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe certainly had interest, but he was assertive and getting back to us and saying, ‘Hey, this is something I want to be doing if you guys want to do it.’ So we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s go’,\u201d Rollins men\u2019s basketball coach Kevin Hogan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Quartlebaum is fully healthy now and has kept a positive attitude throughout the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got a super supportive coaching staff and all my teammates. Like, just being able to play again, it’s such a blessing,\u201d Quartlebaum said.<\/p>\n
He hit one year in remission on Christmas Eve. While his experience with Hodgkin’s is not something he talks about a lot, it does give him a new perspective on not just basketball, but life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can’t remember who told me this quote, but it was like, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan. So after this, I’ve just been kind of taking it in stride.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WINTER PARK, Fla. \u2014\u00a0In his final season of college basketball, Mayson Quartlebaum is having arguably his best year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10929,3076,1011,1013,1238,274,4403,8294,111,1236,1548,1190,115,1335,139,141,140,110,1237,1746,278,835],"class_list":["post-171798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-college-sports","tag-app-good-news","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-latest-human-interest-stories","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-college","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-florida-sports","tag-good-news","tag-human-interest","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-thomas-cook","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}