Four Mondays, One Mission
Before sunrise on four Mondays this fall, a car rolled out of Carleton College and pointed toward Rochester, Minnesota.
Three different drivers — his mother, a wide receiver, and his football coach — each took turns making the one-hour trip.
Their shared mission: to help quarterback Jack Curtis hold onto a dream that should have been impossible.
Curtis, a senior at Carleton, has Stage 2 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Chemotherapy, nausea, weakness and dehydration normally rule out football at any level — let alone quarterbacking a college team. Even doctors at the Mayo Clinic said they knew of no athlete who played during active treatment.
But Curtis refused to step aside.
A Grueling Weekly Routine
Every other Monday, from early September to late October, Curtis sat through hours of chemo. By Tuesday morning, he was back in Rochester for immunotherapy. Wednesday he couldn’t get out of bed. Thursday he could watch practice. Friday he might manage a few passes.
And every Saturday, he suited up, slid his pads over the port in his chest, and played.
Remarkably, he’s thrown for 2,776 yards, 26 touchdowns, broken school records, and ranks among the top Division III quarterbacks in multiple categories.
His father describes it with one word: awe.
A Family of Competitors, A Childhood of Grit
Jack grew up in a sports household — his dad a college football player, his mom an athlete too. As a kid, he was “Spiderman” on defense: always undersized, always hanging on.
He carried that toughness into high school and college. He once played with a torn MCL. He nearly walked away from Carleton — a tiny school far from home — but eventually earned the starting job and built a tight-knit group of teammates who became family.
The Pain That Changed Everything
Last spring, Curtis noticed lumps near his collarbone. By summer, chest pains hit with terrifying intensity, leaving him gasping on the floor in the middle of the night.
After weeks of uncertainty, a biopsy confirmed Stage 2 “unfavorable” Hodgkin’s lymphoma — the cancer had spread into his chest cavity.
His first question wasn’t fear.
It was: “Can we delay treatment until after football season?”
Doctors laughed gently as they told him no.
Breaking Down, Then Building Back Up
Chemo was brutal. The physical misery was matched only by the mental collapse — the fear he might lose football, school, or his future in aerospace engineering.
But after just two rounds of treatment, a PET scan showed no active lymphoma cells. Not cured yet, but winning. That night he burned the goodbye letters he had written in despair.
He asked his doctors:
Can I return to school?
Transfer care to Mayo Clinic?
Play football?
His doctor shrugged:
“Well, it’s not like football is going to give you more cancer.”
A Medical Plan With Zero Margin for Error
To make football possible, every appointment had to be perfectly timed:
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Chemo early Monday
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Immunotherapy Tuesday morning
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Recovery Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
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Games on Saturday
Any shift in the schedule, any slight slide in his platelet count, and game day was off.
His care teams “moved mountains” to make it possible.
His mother struggled with the fear of letting her son — sick, tired, and vulnerable — get hit on purpose every weekend. But ultimately, she chose the harder path: supporting his dream instead of stopping it.
A Team That Became a Lifeline
Carleton rallied around him.
His coach drove him to chemo.
His center did game prep.
His teammates cooked his meals.
His athletic trainer managed his hydration and nutrition.
Most importantly, they treated him like Jack — not “the kid with cancer.”
Defying Logic, Week After Week
Despite almost no practice reps, Curtis has produced the best season of his life. On Thursdays he often looked too sick to walk, yet on Saturdays he was completing 30 passes and throwing touchdowns.
Even now, as he prepares for his final game, he’s battling a broken index finger on his throwing hand — one of the worst injuries a quarterback can have. But no one is counting him out.
Radiation begins in December. If all goes well, he’ll ring the bell on December 19.
A New Perspective
Cancer reshaped Curtis.
The perfectionist who once turned in his own mother for sneaking a water bottle into the zoo now lives in the gray — taking life one test, one practice, one game at a time.
He didn’t return for records or stats.
He returned for the small joys:
the locker room celebrations, Mario Kart battles, family-style dinners with teammates.
The extraordinary stats?
Just extra.
‘Good Enough’
Before games, Jack and his father used to drop to their knees and see who could hit the crossbar from the farthest distance. Jack eventually surpassed him.
This season, after warmups, Jack still walks to the 50-yard line, drops to his knees, and flicks the ball toward the end zone.
He can’t quite reach the crossbar anymore.
But it reaches the end zone.
“And that,” he says, “was good enough.”
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