Join Us to Support Sarah Waite with Our Spring Racquetball Tournament!

The Club Racquet & Fitness is proud to host a racquetball tournament with a mission. Sarah's dad, Scott, has been a legacy member of our club, and we are proud to support him and his family during these difficult times. We want to come together for this cause and support a local Hamburg family. Players can register here for the tournament on April 30th, 2022.

Thank you to our sponsors!

Sarah's Story:

September 14, 2021 began a very scary & life altering journey for 19-year-old Sarah Waite, from Hamburg, NY, who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

Sarah graduated from Hamburg High School in June 2021 and was very excited to begin at St Bonaventure University pursuing a career as a Nurse Practitioner specializing in Oncology and Psychology. In late August, about 3 weeks after she moved into her dorm at St. Bonnie’s, she came down with a terrible cough. Following multiple negative Covid-19 tests, and a visit to the family doctor, she was told that it was a bad case of bronchitis. She followed doctors’ orders, however, it lingered, and her symptoms worsened.

After another doctor visit and an x-ray, her parents received a phone call directly from her doctor at 10:30pm that night of September 14th, to go pick Sarah up immediately from Bonnies because something in the x-ray was terribly wrong.

Early the next morning, Sarah went for a CT scan which showed she had multiple tumors, one of them being larger than the size of her heart. Sadly, following a PET scan and biopsy, Sarah was officially diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and started a 6-month regime of by-weekly chemotherapy that begun October 14th, 2021.

Everyone around Sarah was in shock and severely heartbroken by this news. Sarah went from being a typical excited teenager with a new chapter of independence as a freshman at college, to fighting for her life.

Through all of this, Sarah was determined not to let her college career slide. While St. Bonnies instructors on a personal level have worked with her schedule and adjusted their classroom setting to an online version, Sarah is maintaining A’s in all her classes and on the Dean’s list.

Sarah, unfortunately, had to withdraw from her work study at Bonnies and carries great anxiety related to the growing expenses related to co-pays and other associated costs burdening the family.

In the end, Sarah and those around her are grateful that this cancer is not only treatable, but curable, and are maintaining a positive attitude, especially Sarah, while enduring the difficult side effects of chemotherapy.