4/24/2019 10:30:00 AM | Men's Track/Cross Country, My GW: Celebrating our Stories
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After cancer battle, Jakob Coombes is back in action for GW track
By: Eric Detweiler, GW Athletics Communications
Striding up to GW track practice, Jakob Coombes' smile gave away his good news.
All eyes turned toward the surprise visitor. Just like that, this grueling sprint workout on a late February afternoon didn't seem quite so important.
Assistant coach Matt Lange greeted Coombes with the question on everyone's mind: "You beat it?"
"We're all good!" the junior runner responded, diving in for an emphatic high-five and a hug.
Head coach Terry Weir offered his own hug and planted a kiss on the top of Coombes' bald head before the rest of the Colonials joined the impromptu celebration.
Less than three months after being diagnosed with Stage 2B testicular cancer, Coombes was officially in remission.
"Definitely a moment I'm not going to forget," Coombes said recently, eager to share his story on a delightfully ordinary Friday afternoon following a team run and a study session in the Carbonell Center.
Coombes has shown amazing resilience since his diagnosis in early December, battling through surgery and then nine weeks of chemotherapy to return to the track.
"It's remarkable to think about where he was even just a couple weeks ago," Coombes' roommate Jon Dooling said. "It's really the definition of an inspirational story."
Coombes has met every challenge along the way with his trademark positive attitude to beat even his own ambitious timeline for his comeback. He resumed practice during spring break before making his outdoor season debut April 6 at the Towson Invitational.
He's feeling stronger every day with the Atlantic 10 Championships on the horizon.
"Even though it was such a taxing experience, I just always had that mantra: 'Just keep pushing. You're not going to give up. You're going to get there,'" Coombes said. "It didn't matter how I felt – physically, mentally, whatever – I just knew that this was a bump in the road, and I was just going to keep pushing, keep pushing."
The son of a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, Coombes distinguished himself as a team leader for the Colonials long before his cancer fight.
Since his arrival in Foggy Bottom, Coombes has impressed Weir with his knack for balancing work and fun. He's been a beam of light for the group in a sport in which training can get monotonous quickly, which he attributes to a childhood in which he bounced around to a dozen or so outposts in the U.S. and Canada as his father changed military assignments.
"He's always joking around with people, always got a smile on his face," Weir said. "It could be rainy and cold, but he's the kind of kid who's always going to find a way to say 'Man, it's a great day.' That positivity flows through him like blood." Coombes endured surgery and then nine weeks of chemotherapy.
Coombes hopes his story can help teach others the importance of self-care.
The 21-year-old first noticed the lump on his testicle in the fall during cross country season, but he waited until just after Thanksgiving to get it checked out.
"I kind of put everything off," Coombes said. "I figured if it was something big I'd be able to tell right away."
As the fall semester was winding to a close, Coombes' life was being turned upside down.
Coombes actually competed in GW's indoor season opener Dec. 2 at Maryland Eastern Shore – and won his heat of the 800 meters – between his initial visit to urgent care and a follow-up appointment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for further testing.
Within hours of an ultrasound, Coombes was sent into surgery that would confirm the tumor as cancerous. The battle was on.
"It was just like regular Jakob," said Weir, who visited Coombes in the hospital afterward. "It's how he attacks his workouts, how he attacks his academics, how he handles everything in life anyway.
"He handled this the same way. He was like 'Let's just get this done. I'm going to put my head down and beat this thing.'"
Coombes called a team meeting and crowded the Colonials into his dorm room to break the tough news.
Scanning the stone faces, Coombes reminded the teammates he'd beaten at UMES that they had lost a race to a kid with cancer. Smiles filled the room as the jokes kept flowing, the battle ahead an afterthought – if only for a moment.
"That's the way that I wanted it," Coombes said. "I told them from the get-go that I didn't want this to be something that changed our dynamic. I didn't want them to see me in any different way."
Coombes relied on that spirit to get through his intensive radiation treatment.
Shortly after publicly announcing his fight – and plans to beat the disease – in a video that would be viewed more than 22,000 times on Facebook, Coombes underwent a procedure to implant a chemotherapy port on the right side of his chest.
A total of 22 rounds of radiation followed over three three-week cycles. The week leading up to Christmas he kicked off the first round with three to five hours of treatment daily.
Even then, Coombes kept his sense of humor. There were chuckles instead of tears when a family game night on New Year's Eve was interrupted by his hair falling out in messy clumps because of his treatment.
"That's another moment I'll never forget," Coombes said with a grin.
The challenge only grew greater when classes resumed in January, but Coombes made the decision to keep his full load of courses.
He was living at home in Arlington, Va., then, but he was able to keep his academics on track. There were days in which his mother drove him to GW for a packed morning of classes, took him to treatment and then back to campus for a night class.
"We just kept chipping along," Coombes said. "I didn't put much thought into it, to be honest. There wasn't a whole of time to stop and think 'This sucks.' You just kept rolling because there was always something going on." Coombes was declared cancer-free on Feb. 27.
Life started to become a little more normal once Coombes wrapped up his chemotherapy on Feb. 11. He wasn't able to run alongside his teammates yet, but he started attending practices and lending a hand however he could. It was good to be back.
"Being around those guys, I physically cannot be depressed or down," Coombes said. "It brings out all that positivity. It's easy. We're cracking jokes. It takes my mind off it."
The timing of his doctor's appointment Feb. 27 couldn't have been better.
After receiving word that the latest round of scans came back cancer-free, Coombes directed his mother to Duke Ellington Track and Field where the Colonials were just getting to work.
The ensuing celebration was another inspiring moment in a season full of them.
Coombes posted another Facebook video later that day, this time announcing his good news to the soundtrack of Drake's God's Plan alongside his Goldendoodle Phineas, who was goofily clad in sunglasses and a backward hat.
"Honestly, it's been a pretty big reality check for us as his teammates," Dooling said. "We've talked a lot this season about cherishing every moment we get with one another because you never know what can happen."
Since then, Coombes has been working hard to make up for lost time.
Weir's main concern has been keeping Coombes from doing too much too fast. Slowly but surely, the runner has regained the strength lost during his four-month speed bump.
Originally, Coombes had this weekend's Penn Relays as his target for a return to competition, but he progressed well enough to beat that timeline.
Coombes entered the 200 meters at the Towson Invitational on April 6, a day that practically unfolded in slow motion in the countdown to his race. From warm up to cool down, he did his best to soak up every moment.
His time of 25.00 seconds was slower than he wanted, but that hardly mattered.
"I'd compare it to Christmas Day," Coombes said. "I was just so amped." Coombes returned to the track April 6 at Towson.
Coombes' long-term prognosis is good. He'll undergo scans every two months for the next year and regular check-ups after that to make sure the cancer stays away.
On the track, the future seems bright, too. He's run the 400 meters the past two weeks as he builds up to the 800 meters. He's optimistic that he'll be able to not only run his top event, but post a time he feels good about by the end of the spring.
Then, he'll dive into preparations for his final cross country season. He's excited about his parents' upcoming move to Colorado, in part because it will give him a chance to train at altitude this summer.
"I definitely learned a lot from Jakob going through this whole thing the way he did," Weir said. "He's a special kid that way. He wasn't going to let anything stand in his way. If he even had a negative thought, there's no way he ever put it out there. It was really, really incredible."
