by Karly Monson

Harlan’s athletic director and head boys varsity basketball coach, Mitch Osborn, has been diagnosed with mantle cell non-hodgkin lymphoma.  He started chemotherapy treatments on Sept. 9, each round of treatments two days at a time every four weeks.

Hearing this news, Atlantic High School decided to reach out and show some support for Osborn.  AHS Student Council tweeted out “Our schools may be rivals, but it’s times like this we stick together.  You are in our thoughts and prayers @OsbornMitch!”

Osborn said that Atlantic was the first one to put something like that on Twitter, and that started other schools tweeting him, like Creston and St. Albert.  He even said that he had a direct tweet from junior Ryan Hawkins and a couple of other students from Atlantic.  “Atlantic Student Council’s message to me is incredible.  I retweeted it not for myself, but for Harlan STUCO and students to see the Atlantic student’s compassion towards me and can hopefully pay it back someday.  Sometimes it takes something like this to pull everyone together.”

Other Hawkeye 10 schools have also sent support to Osborn.  “We all compete against each other but to see each other in a different light is just incredible.”

“Very appreciative of it all.” – Mitch Osborn

This isn’t the only support Osborn is receiving, though.  Tweets, text messages, emails, and phone calls are just some of the many ways people are showing care for Osborn.  “All the support is overwhelming, just very overwhelming.  A couple of boys in third period help me do a lot and I call them my assistants.  My school administrative assistant has taken over doing a lot of extra things normally I could take care of and steps up when I’m gone, also my boss.  There is just tremendous support.”

Osborn plans to still continue to coach varsity boys basketball.  He doesn’t have any restrictions on his health, so his doctor said his body will be his judge.  “I have treatments two days a month for this lymphoma; chemo two days now every four weeks, two in Oct., two in Nov., two in Dec., etc.  The last part is a stem cell transplant, and that will be with my own stem cells.  This is the last thing I will do, then hopefully everything will be in remission.”  About coaching Osborn said, “I will coach and be able to work the treatments out with my schedule.  If I’m tired and not up to doing the best I can do then my assistant’s will be doing some practices without me.  There may be some games I won’t be coaching at but that’ll be played by ear.  Hopefully I will be there, though.”

Osborn has mantle cell non-hodgkin lymphoma, and says it’s a “nasty and rare one” and will most likely “rear its ugly head up sometime in the future.”  “Hopefully it’ll be longer down the road, but when it comes back we’ll have to go through chemo again and another stem cell transplant, but this time it would be from a donor.  It’ll hide somewhere but will get its head up sometime.  It’s one of those tough little boogers you can’t get rid of.”

Students and faculty at Atlantic High School shared their reactions to Osborn’s diagnosis of lymphoma. Tina Franken, paraeducator and mother of varsity basketball player Garrett Franken, said she knew Osborn because he has coached against her kids for 12 years. She found out last week that he was diagnosed with the disease. Franken does not expect this to affect the upcoming basketball season and said it might help eliminate negativity in the teams and put what’s important in real life first.

Resource teacher Kathy Blazek emailed him because she felt it was the right thing to do as a teacher.

Sophomore Zac Stork said, “I’ve known him as a coach and have played Harlan a few times.  I wanted to sign it as ‘great coach, great person.’ I feel like it is my duty to support the man.”

The sign made for Osborn will be shared with him from the students and faculty at Atlantic High School.