From 'skin and bones' to starting QB: How Saskatchewan's Anton Amundrud battled cancer to retake the field

There are 16 steps that take you to the top floor of this quintessential college house on 4th Street, not far from the University of Saskatchewan campus. The stairs begin where the living room and kitchen meet, eight steps, then a hairpin-turn to the right and another eight steps to the bedrooms and bathrooms where five football players on the University of Saskatchewan Huskies live.

Laying his head up there is the quarterback, who in mid-October of last season was the favourite to win the Hec Crighton Trophy as the country's best U Sports football player. Through five games where the Huskies went undefeated, Anton Amundrud had averaged 328-yards passing per game without an interception.

“Oh man, he was playing lights-out football,” said Ryker Frank, a fifth-year running back.

“He was big, he was strong, he was making all the throws,” marvelled Joel Lipinski, the Huskies’ strength and conditioning coach.

“Anton is our guy,” said Huskies head coach Scott Flory.

Not two months later, Amundrud had lost more than 30 pounds, was bald, had no eyebrows and was a shell of the towering face of the program. He was in the throes of chemotherapy. The diagnosis, which he’d waited a month in a hospital to receive, was rare and a mouthful: T-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis. It’s worse than it sounds. 

Going up those stairs was agony. Amundrud would clutch onto the railing. Each stride was exhausting. It took him four minutes to make that 16-stair trip to his bedroom.

Just days before, the leader of the program stood in front of the Huskies for an impromptu team meeting. University officials lined the back of the room. Flory cleared his throat, and delivered the news about their quarterback.

“He’s in