The longest 6-minute match

Coach and athlete, father and son, the matchup of a lifetime.

Kevin Bowers grew up a wrestling son. He was born to Warden High School's most successful wrestling coach Rick Bowers.

His freshman year, the Cougars won their fourth state title and Kevin's expectations grew as did the program. The 2002-2003 wrestling season was a year for Rick and Kevin to defend a title with Washington's most prominent 1A program.

Except, this time, the battle was going to include a hidden opponent.

"I had a mole removed and it went through so many dermatologists," Kevin said.

After traveling the hands of dermatologists in Moses Lake, Wenatchee, University of Washington and UCLA, Kevin found out he was battling melanoma. Then came news no 16-year old who just got their license and is "on top of the world" wants to hear.

"We got called back in December to meet with the first surgeon saying yes it was melanoma and they had misdiagnosed it," Kevin said. "That doctor told me that I had three months to live and there was nothing they could do."

Kevin was given the wrestling season to prepare for the conflict that would change his life forever. A Saturday evening in February, the Warden wrestling team was crowned state champions. Tuesday morning, he was starting a new match.

Rick said celebrating the state title was short-lived and a faded memory to watching his son fight the match of his life.

"You realize the whole world doesn't change on how you do at state," Rick added.

That Tuesday, Kevin described it as though the doctors had set his back on fire. He said a nurse walked in with a "steaming hot solution" and the doctor injected it into seven spots on the back.

A machine pressed against Kevin's chest to take photographs and then the doctors removed lymph nodes from the left and right sides of the body. They also removed a spot about three inches around the area the mole was removed for further testing.

Results showed that the lymph system on the left side of Kevin's body was infected and further treatment was necessary. Thus began the usage of interferon.

Interferon is a protein in the body, that at set dosages, is used as a therapy for cancer, such as melanoma.

In May of 2003, Kevin began taking the drug that would suppress and destroy his disease. Its purpose is to stop cancer cells from dividing, improve the immune system and prevent cancer cells from protecting themselves from the immune system.

"You do the full dosages with an IV in the arm every day, five days a week for about a month and that is the heavy dosage," Kevin said. "I would come home with temperatures of 104 degrees and unable to move. You would build up over the weekend and then go back and do it again."

He called it, "constant worst flu you have ever had."

The high dosages stopped and Kevin began taking smaller dosages Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next 11 months. He felt like he was in control of the entire situation after surviving a month of high dosages of interferon and could handle some days of the smaller doses.

His doctors warned him about playing sports, but Kevin is an athlete. His athletic mentality supported him through the first nine months of treatment.

Football started in August and everything was going to be fine, at least, it was supposed to be. During football drills, Kevin was running wind sprints in full football gear with the sun beating down on his already weakened state.

He finally met his match when his body collapsed in the middle of the running drills.

"That was a warning, because the whole time I was like, I am going to beat this," Kevin said. "Then, okay, that is not supposed to happen."

The doctors told him to give up a year of football for a lifetime of memories and Kevin did. But he wanted to make sure he could stay healthy for wrestling. It was his year to win a state title.

His body was weak during practice, it was more tired than what Kevin was used to. He found out that after wrestling matches, it took longer and longer for him to recover.

In December 2003, Warden was scheduled to wrestle Othello in a nonleague match. Kevin begged his dad/coach to let him wrestle. Rick gave him the nod.

"We were hoping he would make it through the year and we let him wrestle Othello and we probably shouldn't have," Rick said.

Kevin was unable to wrestle again that season and the darkness of fighting a lonely battle began to settle in on a young 17 year old watching his friends do what he couldn't. He watched his good friend Carlos Hernandez win a state title and the Warden wrestling team win its third straight championship.

The hope of winning began to dim in a state of depression, a common occurrence with cancer patients and the use of interferon. Rick stopped being a coach one day and put on the hat of a dad and gave Kevin some advice to help him through his trying times.

A aphorism imprinted on one of the walls of the Warden wrestling room reads, "Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strength. When you build your hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength, you must want to be the greatest."

"We were sitting in the practice room and my dad pointed that out to me and he goes, 'you may not be the state champion you want to this year, but you have to show me that,'" Kevin said.

Since that day 19 months ago, Kevin has fought an up-and-down-hill battle, winning and losing along the way. Today, he is more confident than ever that he will be able to put this behind him and move on with his life.

"The whole time, he has never felt sorry for himself, he did everything the doctors told him to do, he has been really strong," Rick said. "I think he is going to beat it because he is damn straight on not letting it take his life."