USC pitcher's mom in remission after being diagnosed with breast cancer
Cindy Westmoreland, mother of South Carolina pitcher Adam Westmoreland, hasn’t missed an opening weekend since he started playing for the Gamecocks.
As Feb. 17, the day of USC’s first baseball game of the 2012 season against Virginia Military Institute, nears, it could be bittersweet for the mother and son duo.
After battling breast cancer since September, Cindy Westmoreland will be having a double mastectomy on Feb. 8, which might force her to miss opening weekend to recover.
“I’m going to try my best,” Cindy Westmoreland said. “I may not make it opening weekend and it’ll be the first one I’ve missed since he’s been there. Even when he had his surgery, we still went to the games — when he had his elbow surgery and he didn’t get to play. We were still there. He is a true baseball player. He loves to play baseball.”
Opening weekend is just a bump in the road for the Adam and Cindy Westmoreland after all that they’ve been through together. It’ll mark the one-month anniversary of when Cindy Westmoreland found out that she was cancer-free after 16 weeks of treatment.
'You’re nervous anytime someone throws the ‘c’ word around'
Adam Westmoreland’s sister-in-law’s mother had passed away from breast cancer just a few months earlier, so when his mother was diagnosed, he said it was something that was really difficult at first.
“It was one of those things that I was really, really nervous about because you’re nervous anytime someone throws around the ‘c’ word,” he said.
Westmoreland had lost his father to Mercer just four years earlier.
“After that, me and my mom got really close,” he said. “She’s followed me around and watched me play ball all my life, so it makes it kind of difficult whenever she has something like that.”
Westmoreland’s father passed away at the start of his senior year in high school. When his dad was sick, Westmoreland spent most of his time with him, so he didn’t attend very many baseball games. In his senior year, he returned full-time to baseball, winning 2008 Mr. Baseball for South Carolina as well as the state championship with Brookland-Cayce High.
“It was one of those things where you grow up quick because you become more so the man of the household when it’s just you and your mother there,” Westmoreland said. “I stayed home to take care of her. I was drafted and everything, but I just kind of decided that I wanted to go to school and be close to her. I still live at home at 22 years old, which a lot of kids don’t do. I don’t regret anything I’ve done because I’ve shared a lot of experiences with her.”
Westmoreland went with his mother to several of her chemo treatments, as did his brother.
“I have a large support group,” Cindy Westmoreland said.
‘I feel like everything happens for a reason’
The Westmorelands aren’t strangers to cancer.
When Adam Westmoreland was growing up, he and his mother used to go to Pine Island when it sponsored a day for Camp Chemo in June. They’d cook hot dogs and burgers, as well as let the kids swim in the pool and the lake.
“Seeing some of the children that were going through that — I think it was a shock to see the little kids,” Cindy Westmoreland said. “You just don’t think of a child getting cancer. It was just a reality check that cancer can affect anybody. It doesn’t matter what your age is.”
For Adam Westmoreland, it taught him more about life, even at an early age.
“People don’t understand how much we take life for granted, as far as what we do on a daily basis,” Adam Westmoreland said. “They don’t understand that these kids are terminally ill. It’s almost like their life is on a timeline, and we just go about our daily life and we complain about things and deal with our own struggles, but these kids are just happy to be here.”
Even with a family of mostly Clemson fans, Adam Westmoreland decided to play baseball for South Carolina. He didn’t know at the time how perfect of a fit it would be. Assistant baseball coach Chad Holbrook’s son, Reece, is a leukemia survivor.
Holbrook reached out to the Teals, a South Carolina family whose young son Baylor Teal had cancer, and offered support to the family because of his similar experience. The team began visiting Teal in the hospital during the 2010 season, when Westmoreland was sitting out with his Tommy John’s surgery. Teal, whom the team had formed a relationship with over the course of the season, passed away while the team was playing Oklahoma in the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.
When the Gamecocks returned to Omaha the next year, they visited the Children’s Hospital and Medical Center and also had Charlie Peters — a cancer patient that coach Ray Tanner’s USC team had visited in the hospital eight years earlier — be the batboy for the games. Peters, now 13, is cancer-free.
“I actually met [Peters] and his little sister whenever we went to Omaha this year,” Westmoreland said. “We all went to the Children’s Hospital, and that was really cool to see that he’s been through everything and beat it. I just think it takes strong people to go through stuff like that.”
Several members of the team also shaved their heads last season to raise awareness for Camp Chemo. With a team that has such a strong affiliation to cancer charity, Westmoreland has found support from his coaches and his teammates. Jackie Bradley Jr. and Matt Price have visited Cindy Westmoreland and Tanner frequently asks about her, as does the rest of the team.
“I feel like everything happens for a reason,” Adam Westmoreland said. “It makes it awesome to see the time that we spend with other people that have been through stuff and things like that. It makes for really cool stories. Whenever we went to Omaha and went to the Children’s Hospital, it makes you appreciate life a lot.”
‘It’s a thrill’
Westmoreland said that he and Holbrook have talked about how cancer has touched both of their families, but it’s more of a “stay-strong type of thing.”
“All of the coaches ask me how she’s doing and keep up with everything that’s going on as far as when she has treatment,” Westmoreland said. “I know that the thing that coach Holbrook’s son had was really hard for him to deal with. I know that he understands what it’s like going through something like that. It makes it a lot easier to have people around you that have been through it.
“Breast cancer is such a common thing now that you find that with a lot of guys you talk to, someone in their family has either had it or is going through it now. Coach Tanner has told me stories of people that he knows have been through it.”
As Cindy Westmoreland prepares to hopefully close the door on cancer for good, she looks forward to when she can return to Carolina Stadium to see her son pitch. Even in an interview about herself, she tries to keep the focus on Adam, saying how proud she is of him.
“It’s a parent’s dream to watch their child get to do what they’ve dreamed of doing,” Cindy Westmoreland said. “He has always wanted to play baseball since he was five years old. The first time I remember seeing him take the mound at Carolina, tears just ran down my face because it’s what every parent wants for their child — to see them accomplish their goal. It’s a thrill.”