Megan Sporny is not your average teenager.
The diagnosis of a rare cancer three years and eight months ago saw to that, but her DNA made her special before this fight of her life began.
Multiple surgeries for a fast-growing tumor on her spine, remissions and recurrences challenged the North Aurora teen. Still, she joined twin brother Andy and other West Aurora senior classmates in late May for graduation.
The competitor in Megan Sporny — something she initially refused to acknowledge as a little girl — refuses to let the disease have the final say.
Bless her and bless her family that also includes her moms, Karen Sporny and EJ Klages.
Surgery as a freshman forced Megan, a promising distance runner, to learn to walk and then run again. She completed races in track and cross country five and 23 months later, respectively.
In between, the pandemic shut down competition.
A recurrence nearly a year ago then confined Sporny to a wheelchair. But since regaining the use of her arms and hands, she’s remade herself again, becoming a wheelchair racer.
“I don’t look like a stick any more,” Megan said, flashing a big smile as she referred to her much-improved arm strength.
Megan also has returned to driving with a car operated by hand controls.
Karen Sporny nodded knowingly.
“She was brand-spanking new to the sport,” Karen said. “She’s got some guns on her now.”
That she does.
They were on display the day before graduation at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. Megan became an individual state champion at the Class 3A girls track state meet by winning the 100-meter wheelchair race in 31.18 seconds.
It was a personal record by two seconds. She then took second place in her three other events — the 200, 400 and 800 — posting personal bests in three of four races at state.
Learning to maneuver and handle the lightweight chair on a track has been quite a process.
Megan, the school’s first wheelchair athlete, credits West Aurora girls track coach Teresa Towles and assistants Megan Weis and Tyler Lawrence with helping ease her transition.
Scott Kurth, a Batavia police officer, is her former club coach and a cancer survivor. He also aided her return to competition.
“They were extremely supportive,” Klages said. “They had a ‘tell us what you need’ type of attitude.”
Weis and Lawrence reached out to the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association for assistance in developing Megan’s training. During the regular season, she would race against able-bodied runners or the clock.
Megan wants to continue, too. She has enrolled at Illinois, where she plans to compete with the school’s wheelchair race team. She couldn’t do much better.
“Illinois is one of the top schools in disability awareness and accommodations,” Karen Sporny said. “Their setup is just amazing.”
Megan and her twin Andy, who will attend Missouri with an eye on becoming a special-education teacher and possibly an adaptive sports coach, will be going separate ways for only the second time in their young lives.
Megan, Karen and EJ spent eight weeks in Seattle late in the twins’ junior year while Megan took part in a clinical trial. Andy stayed with relatives while attending West Aurora.
The trial failed to provide the hoped-for breakthrough.
“It actually made me worse,” Megan said.
She began more treatment that summer, pushing ahead with her training.
Megan caught the running bug at a fairly young age. The siblings were in fourth grade. She credits Andy, who had started running and joined a club team.
“I actually hated it,” Megan said. “I said I would never be a runner, I would be a dancer, so I’d show up in skirts and flip-flops.”
Then her brother brought home a participation trophy. Suddenly, the dancer wanted to win more than her brother.
Both were members of Herget Middle School boys and girls cross country teams that won IESA state titles when they were in eighth grade.
“It’s been eventful and a journey,” Andy said. “To see her go from where she’s very active, then to not active then to extremely active again and excel at it, that was great to see.”
Through it all, Megan has maintained and even expanded her goals.
“I’m majoring in kinesiology to become a physical therapist in the NFL,” she said. “When I saw that a woman had been hired as an assistant coach with the 49ers, I realized if girls can be a part of the world of the NFL, I can too.”
First, though, will be her competitive work in Champaign.
“It’s the Paralympic training headquarters for wheelchair racing, so I won’t just be training with college athletes,” Megan said. “I’ll be training with professionals too.
“I’ve always dreamed of being a college athlete. This might not be running, but it allows me to fulfill my dream.”
West Aurora’s fight song is “Roll on, You Blackhawks.” Megan Sporny has simply been taking that to heart, showing the heart of a state champion.
And as Klages said, “The path has changed, but we’re still on the path — college, sports, whatever. It’s not the direct path but still the path.”
