Four years after brain surgery, N. Broward Prep senior is headed to college — but not for golf
For Anthony Trudel, a seemingly routine-but-persistent headache led to an emergency room visit followed by a frantic helicopter ride from Boca Raton to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami.
Trudel, an 18-year-old senior at North Broward Prep, was just 13 when he was sent home from school due to what he thought was a migraine.
“I couldn’t focus on school,” Trudel said of the head pain he felt that day.
Trudel’s doctor gave him medication and sent him home. But when the pain got even worse the next day, Trudel’s mother, Daniela, took him to an emergency room in Boca.
At that point, a scan revealed a massive softball-sized tumor in Trudel’s brain. Trudel was immediately airlifted to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, which was best equipped to handle this delicate surgery.
Trudel then got that unwanted helicopter ride, along with his father, Richard.
But Trudel said he wasn’t as nervous as one might think.
“I was frozen in time,” Trudel said. “I didn’t think of the possible implications of the tumor — cancer and chemotherapy. I was just focused on going there and getting healthy.”
Fortunately for Trudel, the tumor was benign, and the first of two surgeries — performed in April of 2017 — removed about 98 percent of the mass.
Because of everything he endured, Trudel was able to meet his golf idol, Rickie Fowler, thanks to help from the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Still, Trudel missed six months of school — the end of his seventh-grade year and the start of his eighth — while he got treatment. That included three months during which he lived in Jacksonville, where he got proton radiation at UF Health.
“It’s a specialized type of radiation,” Daniela Trudel said. “The goal is to not damage other areas of his body and just attack the tumor.”
But despite all that, Trudel has been able to continue his golf career, a sport that he started tinkering with at age three.
Richard Trudel knew pretty quickly his son was super interested in golf.
“When he was only 4,” Richard said, “he called me in my office and said, ‘I want you to build me a hole in the backyard’.”
Trudel started playing competitively at age 9, and he has been on the North Broward Prep team since his sophomore year.
The Eagles, coached by Mike Richards, finished seventh at state last year.
This season, however, the Eagles were moved from Class 2A to 1A, which is a much tougher classification, Richards said.
Trudel, who dropped 30 pounds and got in better shape last year, is North Broward Prep’s fourth-best golfer, according to his coach. Trudel is 6-foot tall, and he now weighs 165 pounds.
“Anthony has been a solid player for us,” Richards said. “He has improved each year, and he just has to close better down the stretch.
“But Anthony doesn’t give up. Maybe that goes back to what happened in his life (brain surgery). He tries hard every tournament, every hole, every shot.”
Trudel, who said he got scholarship interest from a Division II university, will not be continuing his golf career in college.
He seems most excited about possibly attending Auburn University, his mother’s alma mater.
“I’ve been to Auburn’s campus 10 or 15 times, and that’s where I dream to go,” said Trudel, who has a 3.83 grade-point average and wants to work for a sports league such as the PGA. “Golf means a lot to me. But my education and where I want to go means more.”
Trudel’s backup plan is to follow his father into the world of real estate, but the most important thing is that he is healthy.
“Maybe my memory is not the same,” Trudel said of the repercussions of brain surgery four-plus years ago. “But I’m still the same person, and I don’t ask for special treatment in school.
“I don’t want more time to take tests. I just want to do the same things as my friends.”
Trudel was recently accepted to Alabama and to Ole Miss. Four years ago, though, attending college was the last thought in the minds of Trudel’s parents.
“I can’t even put into words what he has accomplished,” Richard Trudel said. “It’s a pure miracle.”