Kaden Tennyson is a high school senior who works at an ice cream shop to make a few bucks to help pay for Uber drives and a veterinarian bill for his injured dog. He\u2019s also a shotputter and discus thrower at Riverside Notre Dame.<\/p>\n
He was suffering from a strained tendon in his right ankle resting at home when his ice cream manager called with a request for assistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was insanely busy,\u201d said Tennyson, who is 6 feet 6 and 300 pounds. \u201cI took an Advil and served birthday cake, brownie, chocolate fudge.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no way Tennyson wouldn\u2019t answer the call for duty.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my first job as a teenager,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s good for job experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tennyson never made it to the Southern Section track preliminaries after winning the league title.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery throw, it hurt badly,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to push through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He made the decision to protect his future, so he passed on a chance to compete at Saturday\u2019s Southern Section track championships.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s enjoyed much success in high school, on and off the playing field. He was back-to-back Skyline League champion. His best efforts were 51-10 in the shotput and 145-7 in the discus. He was admitted to 19 colleges. He was recognized by the Riverside Hall of Fame as a top scholar-athlete. He\u2019s a two-time Principal\u2019s Honor Roll recipient.<\/p>\n
And yet, all that pales in comparison to what he has been forced to endure while his mother, Janet, twice battled cancer, affecting everyone emotionally and financially.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a mother, it\u2019s been humbling to watch the kind of young man he has become through adversity,\u201d Janet said in a letter she wrote honoring her son.<\/p>\n
Fighting cancer is exhausting for everyone involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t a spend a lot of time together, \u201c Kaden said. \u201cShe was mainly asleep. I wanted to be strong at home and not cry to make her sad. My friends helped a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the senior activities Kaden hoped to participate in were lost for financial reasons, like going to the prom with his girlfriend.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s focused on the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my dreams is to raise my own successful family,\u201d he said. \u201cIn order to do that, you need to be successful yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll take his 3.8 grade-point average and giant body to study buisness and compete in track and field at UC Irvine.<\/p>\n
His mother is recovering. He intends to walk at graduation on June 5.<\/p>\n
His mother says, \u201cKaden\u2019s journey reflects resilience, family, perseverance and the reality that the effects of a serious illness don\u2019t end when treatment does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaden\u2019s smile continues. Maybe it\u2019s because he works at an ice cream shop.<\/p>\n
Asked he if he gets to sample the products, he said, \u201cSometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a happy ending on any day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kaden Tennyson is a high school senior who works at an ice cream shop to make a few…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":802887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,235,326853,2091,19835,144475,316,93708,307502,326852,2961,224,5337,7088,17241,27751,34158,8763,326854],"class_list":{"0":"post-802886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-cancer","11":"tag-discus-thrower","12":"tag-field","13":"tag-future","14":"tag-high-school-senior","15":"tag-home","16":"tag-ice-cream-shop","17":"tag-janet","18":"tag-kaden-tennyson","19":"tag-la","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-lot","23":"tag-mother","24":"tag-reality","25":"tag-resilience","26":"tag-son","27":"tag-southern-section-track-preliminary"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116590076178603876","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}