Newfield boys basketball rallies around coach Andrew Gallo and wife Jen, who has Stage 1 breast cancer
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Andrew Gallo, Newfield boys basketball head coach, and wife Jen Gallo pose for a portrait at Newfield High School on Tuesday. The Newfield basketball community has rallied around Jen Gallo while she undergoes treatment to battle breast cancer. Credit: James Escher
Jen Gallo was looking inside her patient portal. The mammogram had been clear last August, but there was something there on the sonogram, and that led to a biopsy. So it was the night of Sept. 11, and she searched for a comforting term in the report and it just wasn’t there.
“I’ve had a lot of biopsies and they’ve all been benign in the past, so I kind of kept reading it and looking for the word ‘benign,’ " said Gallo, the 48-year-old wife of Newfield varsity boys basketball coach Andrew Gallo and someone who had been committed to her biannual testing because her mom had breast cancer.
“I was in the bedroom and I came out to Andrew and I just said, ‘I don’t understand. It doesn’t say benign.’ I guess my brain couldn’t comprehend . . . But I think we just kind of put it away and didn’t talk about it, and we both knew what it was. It was horrifying.”
An ordeal had arrived, a fight against Stage 1 breast cancer for the speech pathologist in the Middle Country Central School District, mom of teen daughters Jules and Maddie and former Centereach field hockey player.
The fight began with 13 rounds of chemo dripping through a port in her chest, six-to-eight hours each time, with Andrew by her side, a loving couple living on another comforting term — hope.
There have been good signs, yet major surgery and more pathology tests are ahead.
“As much as I’m hopeful, we’re also understanding that things could go wrong still,” Andrew said. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Teaming up to help
In the midst of everything, his Newfield team of teens has been all-in for its coach and his wife.
The players have been supportive. They have helped in this season’s goal to raise awareness for breast cancer. They wore their pink shirts and solicited pledges for a charitable fundraiser.
“The fact that they all got on board behind the cause was really special,” Andrew said.
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From left, Newfield boys basketball players Bryce Goodman, Mat Evers and Ranard Fields as well as other team members solicited pledges at the school in December to benefit a breast cancer charity, Positively Pink. Jen Gallo, the wife of coach Andrew Gallo, was diagnosed with the disease in September. Credit: Andrew Gallo
The 49-year-old Newfield physical education teacher, who used to be an all-league guard for the Wolverines, dreamed up the “Hoops for Hope” cause during a chemo session. He called it his “mission.” It featured a December day of district teams from Centereach and Newfield playing boys basketball games at the varsity, JV and middle school levels inside Newfield’s gym.
Between the pledges in the district, including those collected by the Newfield and Centereach boys basketball programs, a raffle, T-shirt, concession and pink hair-ribbon sales and a $1,500 donation from the organization “Team Up 4 Community,” the total raised came to $5,321.
That went to "Positively Pink," run by Jen’s friend in Stony Brook, Maria McMullen, a breast cancer survivor. Her nonprofit provides a care package with practical and inspirational items to help women following breast cancer surgery and/or chemo and radiation.
The players could feel a sense of satisfaction.
“We did the fundraiser for a cause that we all thought was very good,” senior center Bryce Goodman said. “It was very nice seeing the whole community come together for one cause.”
Assistant coach Corey Tulaba was the one who initially told the team about Jen’s cancer diagnosis upon Andrew's request.
“The group that we have, the buy-in and the care and the family aspect of it, I think it hit everybody hard,” Tulaba said.
Andrew later discussed it with the players. He has since broken down in front of them on two occasions.
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Andrew Gallo, Newfield boys basketball head coach, from left, and wife Jen Gallo pose for a picture with members of the varsity and junior varsity teams at Newfield High School on Tuesday. The Newfield basketball community has rallied around Jen Gallo while she undergoes treatment to battle breast cancer. Credit: James Escher
“He treats us all with respect,” said Josh Hayes, the Wolverines’ standout senior forward. “Just to see him tear up like that, it does make me tear up, too. It makes me sad.”
One of those teary occasions came after a recent win at North Babylon, an important one in Newfield’s push toward making the postseason in Suffolk Class AAA. This 9-8 team will qualify if it beats Northport in Tuesday night’s regular-season finale.
“I came into the locker room and said, ‘It’s just been an emotional roller coaster this season,’ ” Andrew said.
“I got hugs from the kids: ‘We’ve got you, Coach.’ ”
Despair and the quest for happiness
Jen underwent an MRI on Dec. 26. Word came five days later that there was no longer evidence of the cancer. But the chemo caused kidney failure and she needed to be hospitalized on Jan. 7 for five days. Another very difficult stretch for Andrew, too.
“It’s been the hardest thing in my entire life so far, juggling the basketball program, juggling taking care for my wife, juggling work; I have two daughters,” he said. “It’s strengthened me beyond, but it’s been real hard, man.”
After a radiologist confirmed the cancer in a call on Sept. 12, the wait for the start of chemo nearly a month later was real difficult for Jen.
“It was hard just knowing that you’re living with cancer inside of you,” she said. “Just wanting to start, like, let’s get this going.”
But then came the side effects — the nausea all the time, the rash all over her body, the 20 pounds of weight loss, the first hospital stay right after Thanksgiving when her white blood cell count dropped too low and then the kidney failure, which ended the chemo treatments. She didn't lose her hair, though.
“I just tell everyone, ‘Get your mammograms. Get your sonograms,’ ” she said. “Get it because as horrible as chemo is, it saved my life.”
She has mostly been in insolation at home the last two months. Her next step is a difficult one— a bilateral mastectomy tentatively scheduled for Feb. 19.
“There are days that I say to her, ‘You know what, Jen? It’s OK to not feel good, to feel bad for yourself. It’s OK. You’re allowed to do that,’ ” McMullen said. “But in her mind, she brings that positivity out, and then she tells everyone that she’s doing really well.”
The hope is she can return to work about six weeks after the surgery — if the pathology tests are negative.
“I feel like it’s probably always going to be in the back of your mind that it could come back, but I don’t really want to live that way,” Jen said. “. . . I feel like I just want to get back to being happy.”