Courage and comeback: Hillyard’s triumph over leukemia

The date was Nov. 11, 2021, and Helaina Hillyard ’25 was set to play her first home basketball game the next day for the university in Florida where she studied pre-dentistry.  

Hillyard’s sister arrived that night, but her sister’s excitement turned to concern when she saw Hillyard. She wanted to take her to a doctor. Hillyard said she’d wait and go on the weekend.

“I had bruises all over me, and these dots. I thought it was because I wasn’t taking care of myself and playing basketball and bumping into everybody,” Hillyard recalls. 

Hillyard never did play that game. Her sister picked her up at 6:30 a.m. the next morning, took her to urgent care, and from there to the emergency room.

She was told if she had waited a few more hours she could have died from internal bleeding or had a brain bleed. The diagnosis was acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which required immediate treatment. Rather than stay in Florida, so far from her family in Mediapolis, Iowa, Hillyard was flown to Iowa City and taken directly to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital. 

For the next two-and-a-half years she had daily chemotherapy and a series of intensive in-patient treatments. 

“I thought I was never going to play sports again. It was my goal when I was first diagnosed to pursue my dreams to be a dentist and be a student-athlete,” she says. “When I was in the hospital I voiced those goals and asked my doctors for an elliptical in my room so I could stay in shape and not be so bedridden for weeks on end. I was losing all my muscle.” 

Meanwhile, she was trying to figure out the soonest she could be back in school. Cornell’s One Course At A Time offered her the flexibility she needed, she says. She reconnected with Head Volleyball Coach and Director of Athletics Jeff Meeker, who had originally recruited her before she chose another institution. When a short break in treatments aligned with Cornell’s Block 2 classes, she enrolled. 

The next spring she was working out with the Rams volleyball team, and by fall 2023—nearly two years after her diagnosis—she was practicing and playing with the team. The 5-foot-10 middle blocker finished treatment in March 2024 and is now cancer-free.  

Meeker says Hillyard has been an inspiration to the team. One of the themes for Rams athletics last year was “do hard things.” Hillyard, he says, was the ultimate example. 

“Helaina has been such a valuable addition to our team. She has taught our team that we are capable of doing hard things. Watching Helaina succeed in the classroom, consistently improve her performance on the court, and give to our campus and community—all while battling cancer—has made a profound impact on our program and our student-athletes,” Meeker says.

Hillyard admits it was really hard, but she doesn’t dwell on that. 

“I’ve played athletics for a long time and it’s a joy. I find joy from playing,” she says. “Going through something as bad as cancer and still being able to play—it wasn’t really like I’m doing the hardest thing by going to practice every day. It was more like I get to play volleyball every day and I’m thankful to be here, and that I have the opportunity to run and jump and be around such amazing people. It really was a blessing to be able to do that.” 

One of those amazing people, she says, is Coach Meeker. She calls him genuine and thoughtful, and says he’s respected by everyone on the team. She appreciates his confident, yet humble, leadership style and the way he always tries to improve: “I feel like not all coaches have that mindset. They’re like, ‘it’s my way or the highway.’”

Someday, when she’s a dentist, Hillyard says she hopes to be a confident, humble leader too. If it weren’t for the cancer, she would not have known his leadership. 

Everything happens for a reason, she says.

“It sounds crazy, but I really am thankful, not for the sadness of what my family has had to endure, but I’m thankful for the perspective it has given me. Not everyone gets to do the things I’ve been able to do. Not everybody survives leukemia. I told myself I need to do the things other people wished they could have.”