Bryson Strong

Despite a senior year defined by a global health crisis and an unexpected cancer diagnosis, 17-year-old Maple Mountain quarterback, Bryson McQuivey, managed to keep a smile on his face.

Even through the most difficult year of his life, Bryson was most concerned with putting the needs of others and lifting their feelings before his own, his father, Chris McQuivey said. “He was looking out for other people, he wanted to be around people and build people up,” said Bryson’s stepfather, Terry Orchard.

His concern for others was apparent when his doctor told the high school senior his cancer was terminal in August. “I'm sorry that you had to tell me that news,” McQuivey told his doctor. “Bryson’s response was to apologize,” said McQuivey’s stepmother, Merissa McQuivey. “He was apologizing to the doctor for having to bear the news of telling him.”

Through his faith as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, McQuivey did his best to set a good example for others, according to his family.

Put your ‘tough skin’ on

From an early age, football played a big part in McQuivey’s life.

When playing flag football he switched off as a wide receiver and quarterback. As he grew old enough for contact and hits, McQuivey showed up for the challenge.

“I ended up going and seeing all my buddies there and a whole new environment,” McQuivey said in an interview with the Daily Herald in February. “I started this sixth-grade football league and it was like a whole new experience for me. I had to adjust a bit, but I ended up loving it.”

McQuivey spent two years chasing deep passes as a wide receiver. Eventually, Bryson’s throwing arm caught the eye of his friends.

“It was my eighth-grade year that all my friends are like, ‘Okay, we need to go tell coach that Bryson has like a good arm’ and they're like, ‘Dude, why aren't you quarterback?” he said.

After approaching coaches, they decided to try Bryson out as the B-team’s quarterback. The team had a varsity squad, a junior varsity squad, and an A and B team for the eighth grade league. Bryson got the spot on the B-team, and helped lead his team to a state championship game by the time he was a sophomore, but the Golden Eagles of Maple Mountain lost.

By his junior year, he stepped into the junior varsity squad.

“I was fighting for the varsity spot,” McQuivey of his junior year. “I wanted to be the one out there making plays. I want to be out there after the varsity games being the one that has all their eye-black smeared, sweating.”

Near the end of the season, the varsity starting quarterback was injured. Bryson was ready for the challenge, and took his teammate’s spot for the last two games of the season.

“My first game was senior night against the number-one team in 5A (which was Salem Hills at the time) and it was my first varsity game,” said McQuivey. “So, that was very, very traumatizing for me because it's senior night, and I don't want the seniors to be devastated when they're possibly playing their last home game. I played well and scored two touchdowns, but we ended up losing.”

Bryson’s second varsity starting appearance wasn’t any easier.

Maple Mountain was set to play Bountiful, who at the time had several big hitters and were neck-in-neck with the Golden Eagles in terms of record. Terry Orchard texted one the parents of a player on the opposing team before the game: “Hey, don’t break my stepson tonight.”

His father often encouraged McQuivey to put his “tough skin” on.

The Bountiful game also yielded a loss to the Golden Eagles, ending their season. Yet Bryson was deeply thankful to fulfill a dream of being a starting quarterback on the varsity team for the last two games of the season.

Those games would be McQuivey’s last.

At the start of 2020, McQuivey felt unexplained chest pain, which prompted him to be seen by a doctor.

Eventually body scans and blood tests confirmed a rare cancer.

“When they hit us with this sarcoma,” said Bryson. “We were like, ‘Holy crap.’”

Bryson was diagnosed with alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma, a malignant soft-tissue tumor that starts at connective tissues of the body and slowly spreads. According to his mother, Marci, it was a one-in-a-million diagnosis and left him with roughly a 10-15% chance of survival.

McQuivey realized his cancer treatments would take a toll on nearly every aspect of his life.

“That's when things started to come into reality, when the doctor said 18 months of treatments,” McQuivey said. “That's when it started to be like, OK, football is not an option, school is going to be really rough.”

His diagnosis made him even closer to his teammates and friends, who became a vital support system for the high schooler.

‘Bryson Strong’

“You go from a 17-year old boy that's like out hanging out with his friends every night, playing football and running around having basketball games and feeling so good and having all of that energy to not being able to walk five feet without being pulled by (medical) cords,” McQuivey said.

Frequent hospital visits and chemotherapy-induced side effects were draining for McQuivey.

“I could feel my energy fading,” he said.

His mother, Marci, explained, “There's some nights where he just moans and groans all night long, there's some nights I’ll sleep in there with him just on the floor on a mattress.”

After his first round of intensive chemotherapy, McQuivey lost 22 pounds. Nearly everything he ate, he said, came back up.

Through all of this, McQuivey had to try and keep up with school and strove to live as much of a “normal” life as possible.

Marci said his school and teachers were understanding of his situation.

“Don't worry, just eventually, at some point, get the schoolwork in,” teachers would tell Marci.

Somewhere along his journey, a “Bryson Strong” Facebook group, and wristbands, hoodies, shirts and other items bearing hashtag #BrysonStrong began to unite Spanish Fork and its surrounding communities to help him however they could.

“To see that all these people that rally around and help has been just a huge astronomical help in the whole thing,” said Bryson’s father Chris. “We had GoFundMe that got $8,800 in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes.”

Bryson’s mother Marci added, “You don't know how to take it all in and you don't know how to thank everybody.”

Fundraisers, community events, his high school’s spirit week, and many other events were held to help bolster McQuivey and his family. Knowing McQuivey wouldn’t play during his senior year, his teammates took turns wearing his number 15 jersey at each and every game to show in some small way he was still on the field.

All the while, McQuivey did what he could to uplift people — often through speaking to local groups and sharing virtual pep-talks on his Facebook page — and help instill in them the strength he had been cultivating through his cancer fight, showing them what it meant to be “Bryson Strong”.

“I think it's good to be an example,” McQuivey said. “I have this (cancer) no matter what I do. So, in that case, I want to do something good or make something good out of it.”

In March, COVID-19 spread across the world, throwing yet another massive wrench in the lives of Bryson and his family as they fought to defeat their son’s cancer.

“It was difficult because only one of us was allowed to go and be with Bryson,” said Marci of his medical appointments. “During his first couple of admissions to the hospital, we had visitors and we had family, at least two parents most of the time. So with coronavirus, it stinks like having only one parent there because if you get bad news, you're the parent to shoulder it.”

McQuivey remained sick, but relatively steady throughout the summer. At his 9-week scans in April, a stroke of luck graced McQuivey when he went in to have more scans done: His scans were 100% clear.

There was initial excitement, but doctors remained cautious. They said there was a high potential for relapse. A relapse could be deadly.

McQuivey stayed on his chemotherapy regimen and things continued to look hopeful. At the beginning of August and near the start of his senior year, Bryson began to have pain in his knee.

“That's when they found the tumor in his knee,” said Marci. With that discovery, Marci explained that McQuivey's odds of survival dropped to virtually zero, and that his cancer had become resistant to chemotherapy.

“Nobody had ever survived a relapse,” she said. “It’s tough to tell your 17-year old child that basically they weren't supposed to make it and that the doctors weren't going to save him.”

An undying faith

Despite the blowing news, McQuivey kept his head up.

“He just looked at us and said, ‘OK, what's the plan?’” recounted Marci. “’I don’t want to know my odds, I just want to know the plan.’”

Despite becoming increasingly sick and weak, McQuivey managed to dress up for Halloween, go on hunting trips, attended church and witness the entirety of his teammate’s football season.

Shortly after the football season ended, Bryson’s health took a nosedive due to the cancer taking over his bone marrow.

An aggressive chemotherapy plan didn’t help.

Persistent nosebleeds plagued McQuivey, and without the blood in his system being replenished due to his cancer, his body began to shut down.

“The doctor had warned us, ‘If you bring him up here, he may pass away,’ and we did not want him to do that alone or with just one parent,” Chris said. “So, we chose to just keep him here, where we could all be here.”

Surrounded by his family at his Spanish Fork home, two days before Thanksgiving, McQuivey died after receiving a blessing from his parents.

“I took my hands off his head. He was gone,” said McQuivey’s father, Chris.

A day after his death, a balloon release was organized at the Maple Mountain High School football field, honoring McQuivey’s memory and influence.

Relatives and a handful of McQuivey’s teammates and friends surrounded the field’s 15-yard line. The 15-yard line, which is not normally marked, had been painted earlier in the season to honor McQuivey.

People shouted a collective “ska-who” into the sky — something Bryson loved to do in life – as they held their maroon and gold balloons, many bearing messages they’d hope McQuivey would receive in Heaven.

As the balloons were released, silent tears fell on the football field which bore the words “Bryson” and “Strong” painted in either of the end zones along with both words in the center of the field.

Even in death, McQuivey sought to uplift others. He was buried wearing “Nixon Strong” socks and a shirt, which represented another young boy who also passed away with a sarcoma cancer.

A small funeral was held on Dec. 5.

At the service, it was apparent that while Bryson’s body had been declining in the last weeks of his life, his faith had grown and matured exponentially.

Courageously through tears, his mother Marci during the service, read a scripture that had been saved on his phone prior to his death.

“And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!” the scripture reads.

As when McQuivey had been knocked down during football games, through cancer until the end, he put his “tough skin” on, got up, and kept going.

“He dug down deep and he turned toward his Savior,” Marci said. “When you look at him the year before, and you look at him when he passed, and he just changed from boy to man in a year.”

Bryson’s stepfather, Terry, added, “There was a toughness inside of Bryson that we didn't know was there.”

That’s where Bryson became “Bryson Strong”.

Upon reading dozens of letters and emails sent to McQuivey that he never had a chance to read, his family gained a better idea of just how far their son’s life touched the lives of so many.

Bryson’s smile showed out of his own perseverance and faith in his Heavenly Father. He wanted to invite others to share in that faith, too.

“Bryson left us his testimony from a lesson that he gave, and was unknowingly recorded, three weeks before he passed away” Marci said.

“The true desire of my heart is love people with full intent of heart and forgive all of my enemies, and most importantly, to invite others to come until the Savior,” said Marci reading her son’s words.

Bryson left a legacy of perseverance, inspiration and faith to those knew him. Wanting to always pass on the support he himself felt, he and his family organized something to do just that in a very tangible way.

As a way to tell his story after his death, McQuivey’s family created a foundation with an award and scholarship in his name, which McQuivey supported. More information can be found on www.brysonstrong.org.

The family created an annual $1,000 award that was given away at Maple Mountain’s annual football awards banquet, with a separate annual $1,000 scholarship also currently in the works.

“The award is going to be given to a football player who has overcome trials, health issues, family issues or any type of issue that this individual has overcome through the football season, but still shown the ability of showing up smiling and putting forth the effort to do what he needs to do to help his team improve,” Chris said.

Now with countless memories in the hearts of many in southern Utah County, Bryson’s legacy lives on and continues to touch lives.

Bryson’s family shared a wish he had upon all those that helped lift him up through the struggles in his life: “Thank you for loving me, now go share that love with others.”