Just seconds before the introductions will be made before one of the biggest area girls basketball games of the regular season, Marshall’s gym is rocking. The full house is standing, the music is blaring and the players on the court are clapping in rhythm on this cold Saturday afternoon.
Claudette Towers, though, is not on the court. Not yet. She’s off to the side of the stands, unseen by the fans. Her mother, Leola, is helping the Fenwick senior drink a can of pop and eat a candy bar before the game starts.
Her self-administered blood test indicated low blood sugar, so a sugar fix is her pregame routine on this day.
Like Ty Cobb, Arthur Ashe and Ron Santo, Claudette Towers is diabetic. And like those well-known athletes, she’s under pressure to perform–she plays for a high school team that until recently had been ranked No. 1 not only in the Chicago area and the state, but in the nation.
The 5-foot-9-inch Towers, who will play at DePaul for coach Doug Bruno next year, is considered among the nation’s best players. The prestigious Blue Star list of top 100 seniors in the nation lists her at No. 70, and the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association made her a second-team pick as a junior for its Class AA all-state team.
She averages a modest 10 points a game, but that’s not where her value lies. Towers contributes seven assists and more than four steals a game and directs the flow of the Friars’ offense from the point.
In the game against perennial Public League power Marshall late last month, in a gym where coach Dorothy Gaters’ team rarely loses, Towers helped the Friars leave with a stunning 55-53 win in overtime.
Such victories can be difficult, but not as difficult as what Towers, 18, has gone through the last two years, since she was diagnosed with diabetes during her sophomore season. Then 16, she wasn’t feeling well and came to her mother.
“When she told me she was going to the bathroom every 30 minutes, I knew,” Leola Towers said. “I immediately checked her blood sugar. And she was over 600.”
If Leola Towers sounds as if she knew exactly what she was doing, she did. Claudette’s mother has managed a doctor’s office and for 22 years has been a diabetic. Like her daughter, Leola is a Type 1 diabetic–the condition more commonly called juvenile diabetes. But she and her husband, Willie, believed the disease would skip a generation because their two other children, Catrina, 24, and Willie, 22, don’t have it.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Claudette said. “I went to my mom and she said I might be diabetic. I was speechless.”
Leola took her to a doctor and Claudette tested positive for the disease.
“I cried for a while,” Claudette said. “I didn’t know much about it. What’s next?”
This was not just any teenager asking that question. Much had been expected of Towers ever since she stepped on the basketball court as a freshman for coach Dave Power, who had molded Immaculate Heart of Mary into a state champion in the late 1980s and was attempting to do the same at the former all-boys school in Oak Park.
It probably came as no surprise to the Towers family that Claudette was an exceptional athlete growing up. Her father played tight end for Mississippi Valley State, alma mater of Jerry Rice, and faced the Jackson State teams of the late Walter Payton.
There were no girls her age on the block in Maywood where Claudette Towers grew up, so she hung around with the boys. And hanging around meant playing baseball, basketball–just about any sport.
“There were no other girls to play with, so she had to follow her brother around,” Leola said. “And the boys would ring the doorbell and say they needed another player.”
That meant Claudette, who has participated in organized athletics since she was in 3rd grade. She made an impact in Little League as a first baseman.
“She was really good at it, but we just couldn’t make her stay with it,” her mother said.
When Claudette Towers entered Fenwick, Power didn’t have the height he enjoys now. But he did have a dynamic sophomore guard, Katie O’Grady, and envisioned a backcourt that would be tough to match. Fenwick was on the verge of joining the area’s elite girls basketball programs. And it was in that atmosphere that Towers found out about her diabetes.
“She told me early in her sophomore season and she was going to battle it,” Power said. “I have just seen a few instances where I really notice it affecting her.”
One of those instances occurred at a critical time for the school and Towers–during last season’s Class AA state semifinals when Buffalo Grove stunned heavily favored Fenwick. Towers hadn’t been feeling well for a few days, Fenwick assistant Jana Mathis said, and was struggling that day.
“During the game she came over to the coach and said, `I don’t feel so good. I need some sugar,’ ” Mathis recalled.
“Her blood sugar was incredibly low,” Mathis remembered. “It was to a point where I couldn’t believe she was playing.”
Power, however, said they got Towers her candy bar in time. “She snapped back right away,” he recalled. “I think we got it quick. If she had continued to have any kind of problem, she would have been done for the game.”
Somehow, Towers was able to play almost the entire 32 minutes. She managed 10 rebounds and four assists but hit only two of her nine field-goal attempts and finished with six points. Buffalo Grove held Fenwick to its lowest point total of the season in a 45-34 upset.
Power never mentioned the incident and congratulated the eventual Class AA champion. Maybe that’s why this Fenwick team seems like it’s on a mission to erase that disappointment.
A more important mission, though, is to provide support for Towers and teammate Casey Walsh, who also is Type 1 diabetic.
“Her mom is at every game and a trainer is available at every practice,” Power said of Towers. “If she’s not feeling right, I jump on it real quick.”
Towers also has to watch what she eats. She’s allowed no sweets or carbohydrates, though when her blood sugar is too low she needs a quick dose of sugar that juice, pop or candy can provide. Her daily routine includes two shots of insulin. And Towers keeps a monitor to test her blood sugar along with shoes, socks and uniform in her gym bag. To test herself, Towers must prick a finger to provide the blood needed for the test.
That is a routine familiar to those who suffer from Type 1 diabetes. The American Diabetes Association estimates that 15.7 million people in the U.S.–5.9 percent of the population–have diabetes but only 10.4 million of them have been diagnosed. Towers is one of the estimated 500,000 to 1 million with Type 1.
Towers said she monitors herself three times a day and said pricking her finger for blood is harder than giving herself an injection of insulin. Some athletes, notably former Bears lineman Jay Leeuwenberg, monitor themselves more often. Linda McClure, director of the International Diabetic Athletes Association, said Leeuwenberg was so concerned about not letting diabetes be a factor, that he would check his blood sugar 32 times on game days. “It’s a lot of work, a lot of work to maintain your health,” said McClure, an avid cyclist who helps provide support to athletes around the world.The daily routine isn’t going to change once Towers enters DePaul.
“We take each athlete’s individual needs into consideration every day,” Bruno said. “Whether it’s a person rehabbing a knee or a person who has asthma–whatever the medical situation.”
Bruno said if Towers’ condition had been a concern, he would have brought it up during the recruiting process. But he didn’t.
“I know too many athletes who have overcome this,” said Bruno, who first saw Towers as a 7th-grader.
“Her junior year was a magnificent year of leadership,” Bruno said, “giving the ball to people on her team who needed it.
“She made big plays on the defensive side of the ball, went and got rebounds. On the offensive side, there wasn’t a lot of flash and sizzle. Just a lot of good decision-making–a maturity you don’t really see in a lot of high school guards.”
But then Claudette Towers has had to mature a lot in the last two years.
