Strength defines St. John’s School's Lily Dunlap in overcoming cancer, hearing loss

Seventeen-year-old varsity basketball player demonstrates mind over matter in battling life-altering setbacks.

St. John's junior Lily Dunlap, 17, has had hearing loss since birth and recently beat Hodgkin's Lymphoma. / Contributed photo Kathy Halligan

During a high school varsity girls basketball game against St. Francis Episcopal on Dec. 10, St. John’s School junior Lily Dunlap shot a 3-pointer. She missed.

“(She) Completely fouled me!” Dunlap recalled.

Remembering how tightly the defender had played her, Dunlap, on the next possession, drew her opponent close, got her to jump at a shot fake, and took a quick step back before launching another 3 from the right wing.

This one splashed through, mere moments before a smile splashed across the 17-year-old’s face.

Just a week earlier, Dunlap, born with hearing loss, had a surgical procedure to remove a small, implanted device from her body called a port, a routine operation for someone treated for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. That was just days after Dunlap was cleared of the Stage 3 cancer on Nov. 26, a happy ending to an exhausting six-month physical and emotional toil.

Those three points were Dunlap’s first of her season. A season doctors initially told her she probably wouldn’t play. It was not just one more St. John’s basket in a 51-29 win, it was a cumulation of everything—12 rounds of chemotherapy, working tirelessly to sustain any semblance of order, and proving to herself, and those around her, she is capable of so much more than what the imagination holds.

“To come back so quickly, as soon as I was allowed to, and to be successful in doing so, it meant a lot,” Dunlap said. “It showed me I’m stronger than I think. Even though my endurance and immune system and stuff were lower, I was still able to play, and play well.”

That particular game was a target date for Dunlap. Her younger sister, Allison, a freshman, plays for St. Francis Episcopal. Dunlap wanted nothing more than to enjoy her triumphant return while sharing the court with little sis.

And if anyone knows anything about Lily Dunlap, it’s that she will do everything to accomplish anything she sets her mind to.

“She was adamant,” St. John’s girls basketball coach Kathy Halligan said. “There might have been a little glimmer of if she bit off more than she can chew when she was fighting back. It took more out of her than she thought, but it was mind over matter. She was going to play that game.”

Last month, Dunlap was selected as one of 10 national finalists for the 2025 Naismith High School Basketball Courage Award. The Atlanta Tipoff Club, which administers the Naismith awards, will announce a female winner and a male winner on Tuesday, Feb. 25.

According to a news release, the Courage award “recognizes a high school basketball player who has consistently gone above and beyond throughout the basketball season and has demonstrated courage in their approach to their team, school, and community.”

In essence, it recognizes Lily Dunlap.

“Part of me was surprised, but part of me was not,” Dunlap’s mother, Colleen, said of the honor. “She has an amazing story. It’s humbling and exciting, both.”

‘Control the controllable’

Dunlap is a young lady for whom much comes naturally.

“She’s a super talented kid who’s been really good at everything,” said her father, Mike.

But the basketball court is one area where Dunlap had to put in overtime.

As a third grader, she was one of the smallest and youngest kids on the court. It wasn’t until a couple games remained in the season that she scored her first basket.

“From a natural talent standpoint, there are a lot of kids who are much more athletic than she is,” Mike said. “You can see it on her current team. But she’s continuing to play and contribute at 5-2, 105 (pounds), because she outworks everybody and outthinks everybody. It wasn’t just in things that came easy to her. Even if they didn’t, and it was important to her, she was going to find a way.”

Dunlap considers herself a perfectionist.

“Just slight,” she said with a laugh. “I like knowing what I’m doing is important.”

In May, Dunlap was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It devastated her. As someone who loves to be in control, planning everything from days to weeks to months in meticulous fashion, Dunlap was dealt a sudden tsunami of uncertainty.

“I kind of couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I had a lot of plans for the summer and a lot of things I had set my mind on.”

Once Dunlap started treatment, it was brutal. Excruciatingly painful. But after the first couple of rounds, she took solace in knowing what to expect.

Doctors told Dunlap most kids diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma take a year off from school. They did not want to risk infection. But Dunlap was set on not falling behind academically.

She was going to graduate with her classmates. Period. End of story.

St. John's junior Lily Dunlap. / Courtesy photo Kathy Halligan

Dunlap worked with administrators at St. John’s, a private K-12 college preparatory in Houston, for hybrid schooling. Last semester, she did two classes on campus and the rest online. It was a modified approach of four courses, two of them advanced placement.

When Dunlap returned to school in August, she attended on Mondays, had chemotherapy on Tuesdays and was home recovering Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Dunlap “busted butt” to return to school on Fridays and attend football games, wearing a N95 mask.

It wasn’t easy. She had to cram 10 days of schooling into seven days.

But it was necessary.

“That helped me,” said Dunlap, who now has all classes on campus. “As far as still having a lot of my sense of normalcy. School and seeing my friends is a part of that.

“My mantra through all this has been to control the controllable. I took that to heart, whether it was still going to school, still hanging out with friends, still going to church. It helped me go through it because it didn't feel like my entire life was uprooted.”

At first, Dunlap did not want to tell people of her diagnosis. She cringed at the thought of being pitied. But Colleen and Mike encouraged her to tell her friends, for support and routine, and Dunlap eventually did.

Under one condition: “Just be normal with me.”

“It started out with five friends in the loop, and through the course of treatment, that circle got wider and wider as she got more comfortable with the process,” Mike said.

Dunlap’s inspiration was her mother.

When Dunlap was in fifth grade, Colleen was diagnosed with breast cancer. She beat it. Dunlap was there every step of the way, admiring her mother’s strength and resilience.

“I think part of me was just trying to be like my mom in that way,” Dunlap said. “And the other thing is I’m a very religious person. So, knowing there was a reason for this, and I didn’t have to see it but there was a reason this was something God chose for me. It was just taking it one day at a time, one round at a time. Especially once I hit six (rounds), I was like, I got this.”

Colleen was there. Every step of the way. “You’re going to get through this,” Colleen extolled. “You’re going to be OK.”

“Unfortunately, I’ve seen the movie. I know the movie,” Colleen said. “When it came to her treatments, we weren’t ever saying, ‘Oh, you have five, six more (rounds) to go.’ We were saying, ‘Oh, you’ve already done this much.’ Every time she’d say she couldn’t do it, my response was that she was already doing it. ‘We can keep doing it.’”

Colleen encouraged balance.

“Not pushing yourself too hard but also pushing yourself,” Dunlap said.

Was that easier said than done?

“Is it bad if I say not really?” Dunlap said. “It was about not just being the cancer kid and still being Lily. I was still the same person in October that I was in April, and recognizing that, acting like that and showing people.”

As she underwent chemotherapy, two rounds every month from May to October, Dunlap did not attend basketball practices but did attend games. To keep her involved, Halligan awarded her reserve guard a new position.

“It’s our job to keep kids engaged, and one of the ways we kept her engaged was she was Coach Dunlap,” Halligan said. “‘What did you see, Coach?’ Whether at halftime or end of the game, she’d step up there, all the confidence in the world, and told her teammates, good or bad, what she thought. Every one of those kids respected what she had to say.”

St. John's junior Lily Dunlap. / Contributed photo Kathy Halligan

Dunlap, a 3-point specialist, gave tips to individual players on their shooting. She sat on the sideline with Halligan’s staff.

“I loved that I was still a presence for them at game time,” Dunlap said.

Her input was invaluable.

“Here’s a kid, knowing what she’s gone through and where she’s at in the whole process, and she’s here with us, incapable of playing but providing her perspective,” Halligan said. “It’s a teammate, a colleague, a peer, for those kids. Words that probably touched these kids more than what we as coaches had to say.”

‘Just don’t shut down’

Dunlap has fought since day one.

She has had hearing loss since birth but did not find out until she was four years old. Colleen said Dunlap, who has hearing aids, had all sorts of ear infections, and those infections masked an underlying problem the first few years.

“The way that she hears is like when you’re under water and you can hear someone talking, but you’re not catching all of what they’re saying,” Colleen said.

Dunlap said the hearing loss has practically no impact on everyday life. She’s gotten used to it. She’s learned to lip-read. She hears people fine when they are facing her. When they are to her side or at her back, however, it can be a strain.

Without hearing aids, Dunlap projects her hearing is at about 60%. She’s always using them, though, with the exception of submersion in water, like swimming, and sleeping.

“It’s a part of me and who I am,” she said.

Halligan said the hearing loss has an effect on the court every once in a while. Even with hearing aids, gyms can be an ordeal because of the noise and number of people.

“We know as coaches that if we see her lost or there’s a misunderstanding, it’s because we didn't do a very good job speaking to her,” Halligan said. “So, we’ll pull her aside and speak directly to her, like, this is what we meant.”

When Dunlap was younger, things were more complicated.

Colleen battled with a young daughter who always wanted to take her hearing aids out. But the worst part was kids asking about them.

“Once kids at school knew what they were, they would stop talking about it,” Colleen said. “But in a new situation, she’d always have people coming up asking what they were. They weren’t really mean; they were just curious.”

Dunlap constructed a response: “These are my hearing aids. They help me hear better. Some people have glasses to help them see better.”

But the reality was that every time someone asked Dunlap about the hearing aids, “it’s a little bit of a knife,” Colleen said.

In typical Dunlap fashion, however, she found a silver lining. Her 11-year-old brother Joshua has also had hearing loss since birth. Dunlap uses the way she handles hers as an example for him.

She was the one, for instance, who told Joshua how to answer those who had questions about the hearing aids: “‘I wear hearing aids. They help me hear.’ Super short, super simple.”

“I think I was a bit of a role model for him because he saw how I got through it,” Dunlap said. “I still play sports, I still go to loud places, restaurants, things like that.”

With all she’s been through, Dunlap said she’s stronger and can handle more than she thought possible.

Big on community and surrounding herself with the right people, she learned “who my people are in a way that I wouldn’t have before.”

“Everyone is going to go through adversity,” Dunlap said. “It’s not about how difficult the challenge is. It’s about how you walk through it. Obviously, cancer and hearing loss suck. But you can get through it, and you can be a stronger person for it, even if it doesn’t seem like it at first.

“It’s important when you go through challenges to still be yourself and still do the things that make you happy. Just don’t shut down.”

Lily Dunlap, center, poses for a photo with her family at Texas Children's Hospital in December 2024. From left to right is Joshua, Allison, Mike and Colleen. / Contributed photo Kathy Halligan

‘Mightier than you see’

Dunlap’s middle name is Joy.

Accurate. Appropriate. Always has been, and even more so these days.

“There is a different glint in her eyes,” Halligan said. “Not that she took things for granted before, but you see the joy in her face. She’s so happy to be living, to be on the court and be playing the game she loves to play. To be in school, to be hanging with her friends. All these things that so many of us as kids and adults take for granted, you can see how much it means to her.”

Halligan remembers when Dunlap walked into her gym as a freshman for tryouts.

“Very confident in her abilities. Mightier than you see,” Halligan said.

Fierce. Self-assured.

“Full of gusto,” Halligan said. “Doing whatever she needed to do to make the varsity team.”

Dunlap did. She does not back down from challenges. She waves at them.

Through summer camps in North Carolina, Dunlap picked up water kayaking as a hobby. It did not take her long to navigate Class 3, and sometimes Class 4, rapids—long, difficult courses with high waves and rocks—by herself without her hearing aids.

This year, she will be going as a junior counselor to help lead a group of campers, a position she has strived for.

Goal setting is a specialty of Dunlap’s. It’s what ultimately carried her through cancer. She did whatever it took to ensure she always had something to look forward to.

“There was definitely a time when she felt sorry for herself through the diagnosis, but I think she pretty quickly got to a place where she was able to know what was important to her, how she would be able to do them,” Colleen said. “Finding those things that could be goals through the process. Having something to work toward and seeing yourself progressing towards those maybe makes things easier.”

As the Dunlaps chased a diagnosis for Lily in April and May, she continued to play for her club basketball team. The first round of biopsies was a “terrible, really bad day,” Colleen said. Dunlap was in pain, upset and stressed.

But the next day, a Saturday, after some discussion, she and her family traveled to Fort Worth so she could play with her team.

“To keep the normal and routine,” Colleen said. “It was stress, it was normal, it was happy for her. All those things. And she continued to play on that team until the very last minute before she was about to have chemo.”

Every bit of it all makes for someone accustomed to rising and overcoming. Time and time again.

Inspirational, certainly. Courageous, definitely.

“This kid has been through so much, and you would never know it,” Halligan said. “The only reason, at this juncture, you’d even have a thought of it is because of her hair loss. She comes to practice like it’s the best time of her day, and I feel like she probably does that with everything. It could be history class, lunch … there’s something so special about Lily at this juncture in her life, because her perspective and outlook is just amazing.

“It makes the rest of us look pretty darn weak.”

St. John's junior Lily Dunlap. / Contributed photo Kathy Halligan