Warrior Mentality: Teammates Reconnect for Great Cause
4/2/2021 3:07:00 PM | Football, The Golden Flashes Club
The Kent State football program emphasizes the idea of family. Every early morning lift, two-a-days practices and the grind and rigor of a season helps create a bond and brotherhood that goes well beyond football.
Shawn Donaldson and Sam Frist were teammates at Kent State during the 2005 and 2006 seasons. Donaldson, an offensive lineman from northeast Ohio and Frist a defensive lineman from North Carolina. Shawn was a couple of years ahead of Sam and both had gone their separate ways after their playing careers. Shawn was teaching and coaching, first in Indiana and now back in northeast Ohio. Sam went back home to North Carolina and was a police officer and in the National Guard before transitioning into a career in logistics now in the suburbs of Atlanta. They would catch up every so often on social media, exchanging pleasantries and well wishes but nothing more.
“We hadn’t really talked at length in over 10 years,” Frist recalled. “Shawn had reached out last year and said he saw my posts on Facebook and he wanted me to tell my story on his podcast.”
That story began when he knew something wasn’t right during a self-screening he performed in 2018.
“I diagnosed myself and I immediately called my doctor and got in that day,” Frist recalled. “The doctor confirmed my suspicions, I had testicular cancer.”
Fortunately, they had caught it early as testicular cancer is one of the most rapid spreading cancers because of the blood flow to that area of the body. Doctors told him he would need a double orchiectomy, but his early detection prevented the need for additional treatment beyond the surgery.
However, for most people cancer is a five-year process, even after going into remission like Sam did after surgery. He’d go in for quarterly checkups in the first year, then twice a year. Two years after the surgery was one of these bi-annual checkups. It showed that the cancer had returned, this time in one of his lymph nodes.
Sam had a choice. He could do the aggressive chemotherapy that would be all day, practically every day and be done in three months, or go with radiation treatments and be done with treatment in about six. Never one to take the easy way out, Sam chose the aggressive route.
After football, Frist had become a gym rat. Working out and lifting replaced the rigors of college football. Despite the aggressive treatment, Sam continued to go to the gym, every day. The fitness routine helped to combat the traditional side effects of chemotherapy. The workout kept his appetite up, gave him more energy and perhaps most importantly, gave him a sense of normalcy. He came out of the aggressive treatment bigger and strong than when he started. It also cut his recovery time in half, treating his gym routine like a rehab from any of his countless football injuries.
“I think that fitness gets neglected when it comes to fighting any disease, especially cancer,” Frist said. “When you go through chemotherapy treatment, doctors tell you to sit still, don’t do much and let the treatment do its job, that didn’t work for me.”
Sam chronicled his journey of working out through chemotherapy on social media. It was the best way he knew how to connect with friends and family while battling cancer in the middle of a pandemic. It was also a way that he knew that he could spread awareness not only about testicular cancer but using exercise and fitness as a way to enhance a patient’s battle with any disease. That’s where Shawn was able to reconnect with his former teammate.
“I had been following Sam’s story and knew I had to do something to help him,” Donaldson said. “He has every reason to complain or feel sorry for himself and he just doesn’t. His demeanor, his mindset, that warrior mentality is a message that needed to be shared.”
Shawn knew he had the perfect platform to help Sam share his story and message. Like Sam, Shawn also uses fitness as a way to combat the absence of college football. Over the years, he’s built an impressive home gym in his basement.
Perhaps inspired by the motivational leaders he listens to while working out, Donaldson created “The Morning Lifter” a fitness and inspirational blog and podcast. Shawn discusses motivation, leadership as well as fitness and talks to experts in those fields. He’s grown quite a following as well, totaling over 10,000 fans and subscribers across all social media platforms. Sam was Shawn’s third guest on the Morning Lifter Podcast.
“I was honored to be asked to come on and tell my story. I want to raise awareness, not just for testicular cancer, but to help erase the stigma of talking about it and any other disease,” Frist said. “Once you talk about it, you realize that you are not alone in the fight. With support, with fitness, with the right mind set, your body can do amazing things.”
Having Sam on his podcast wasn’t enough for Shawn. He had an idea to raise money as well. In addition to running a blog and podcast, Shawn also started a fitness company he calls Bare Steel Equipment. Building his own home gym allowed him to see some of the flaws in traditional fitness equipment. So, Shawn did something about it and invented a product that will help home and commercial gyms alike.
“It’s a stacked weight pin,” said Donaldson. “It replaces the pin that locks in weight stacks and allows you to stack weight plates on the pin itself. It gives lifters the option and ability to lift beyond the machine’s capacity or help fill in the weight gap between two plates.”
During April, Testicular Cancer Awareness month, Bare Steel Equipment is donating 30 percent of all net proceeds to the Testicular Cancer Society. The products have a custom design for the Testicular Cancer Society and every purchase comes with an informational card on testicular cancer and how to self-screen.
To learn more about Sam’s story, please visit The Morning Lifter and the Bare Steel Equipment Home Page. There you can find out how you can donate to the Testicular Cancer Society and learn more about Shawn’s company.
