Inspiring Althoff athlete earns national award for her courageous cancer battle

Gabby Orlet’s spirit in battling a rare type of bone cancer has earned the Althoff Catholic High School student an award given to just two basketball players nationwide.

Orlet, who is a junior, has been awarded the 2024 Jersey Mike’s Naismith High School Basketball Courage Award. The boys winner is Aidan Goldstein of WISH Academy High School in Los Angeles.

“The Atlanta Tipoff Club, administrators of the Naismith Awards for high school and college basketball excellence, selected Goldstein and Orlet for showing exceptional courage, determination and leadership both on and off the basketball court,” according to a news release Tuesday.

After suffering severe back pain in 2021, Orlet was diagnosed with a giant cell tumor which had damaged part of her back bone. She immediately had two surgeries.

In March 2022, doctors determined that the cancer had returned to the original site and had spread to inside her lungs. Orlet undergoes chemotherapy to combat what she describes as a rare bone cancer.

Orlet said Tuesday she has read “amazing” stories about previous Naismith Courage Award winners.

“It’s definitely very uplifting,” Orlet said of being named an award winner. “I think that’s the reason for this award is to just kind of inspire other kids and that’s definitely what I hope would become of it.”

Last year, Orlet was Illinois’ nominee for the national Spirit of Sport Award, presented annually by the National Federation of State High School Associations. She was chosen from 250 nominees from over 800 member schools in the Illinois High School Association.

Orlet, 17, had been playing basketball for Althoff and volleyball for a club team this winter, but had to stop playing for a back surgery in January. She’s now recovering from this surgery and hopes to return to playing sports.

In a Naismith Courage Award video, Orlet describes her thoughts when she heard a doctor first talk about her condition.

“He told me that he didn’t know if I’d ever play sports again,” she said. “I really thought my life was over because what I knew my life was was sports. Basketball, volleyball, soccer, all of it. So that being taken away, I had no idea how I was supposed to move on.”

But she was able to endure rehab from back surgeries and chemotherapy to return to playing sports until her latest surgery in January.

“I’m on a maintenance program right now until they find something to kill what’s in there,” she said in the video. “So I go once a month. I’ll do that indefinitely until we can find a cure but that’s definitely something I have hope in.”

Naismith Award

A Naismith Courage Award ceremony for Orlet is set for 7 p.m. Monday, March 11 before an Althoff home soccer game. The school is at 5401 W. Main St. in Belleville.

This award was created in 2020 and “recognizes high school basketball players who consistently go above and beyond throughout the basketball season in the face of adversity,” the news release states. Hundreds of students from across the nation were nominated for the award.

Jersey Mike’s donates $2,000 to each winner’s high school basketball program and an additional $2,000 to each winner personally.